arXiv subjects

Kevin C. Smith

Publications and source records attributed to Kevin C. Smith.

16 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Resilience Beyond the Light Cone: Error-Detected Primitives for Practical Dynamic Circuits

Dynamic circuits, which augment unitary operations with mid-circuit measurements and classical feedforward, can generate long-range entanglement in constant depth, enabling low-depth primitives ranging from nontrivial state preparation to many-qubit entangling gates. Escaping the light-cone constraints of unitary circuits, however, comes at a cost: these primitives typically require a number of mid-circuit measurements that scales with system size and that, together with feedforward latency, can introduce errors that degrade the long-range entanglement they rely on. Here, we alleviate this tension by showing that many such primitives, when cast into a common framework, admit an error-detection scheme that trades infidelity for postselection overhead with no additional ancillas. Our framework thus unifies and upgrades a broad class of primitives including fan-out gates, multi-qubit Pauli rotations, the preparation of W and higher-weight Dicke states, and certain non-normal matrix product states. We also introduce a reduced-depth, error-detected implementation of the Hadamard test, extending the use cases of dynamic circuits to a key algorithmic primitive. Finally, we establish the practical utility of our scheme through experiments on a superconducting quantum processor. We demonstrate the error-detected preparation of a long-range entangled Bell pair spanning a 100-qubit chain with fidelity $F=0.59\pm0.02$, surpassing the entanglement-certification threshold $F>0.5$ that the baseline dynamic-circuit implementation fails to reach ($0.39\pm0.01$). Separately, we demonstrate constant-depth preparation of W states of up to 20 qubits by consuming GHZ states of up to 40 qubits, finding absolute fidelity improvements of $\Delta F\approx 0.2$ across the largest sizes studied. Altogether, these results bring low-depth dynamic-circuit primitives within practical reach on present-day hardware.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Preparing 100-qubit symmetry-protected topological order on a digital quantum computer

Symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases extend the Landau paradigm of quantum matter by admitting distinct symmetry-preserving phases that lack any local order parameter. Demonstrating these phases at scale on programmable quantum processors is a key milestone in using quantum hardware to probe emergent many-body phenomena, yet it is impeded by the circuit depth normally required to capture non-trivial entanglement. Here we use a tensor network based approximate quantum compiling (AQC) protocol to construct shallow quantum circuits (18-39 CNOT depth), which prepare 100-site ground states of the spin-1/2 bond-alternating Heisenberg chain in both SPT phases, to 97.9-99.0% fidelity. Upon executing the circuits on IBM quantum hardware, the resulting states exhibit all defining signatures of SPT order including non-local string order for strings of up to length 20, characteristic degeneracies in the entanglement spectrum and clear evidence of symmetry-protected edge modes. The simultaneous observation of these independent diagnostics establishes current quantum computers as versatile platforms for large-scale studies of symmetry-protected quantum matter. More broadly, our results establish a practical foundation for probing non-equilibrium quench dynamics of such systems in regimes that challenge classical computational methods.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Observation of Improved Accuracy over Classical Sparse Ground-State Solvers using a Quantum Computer

Demonstrating quantum advantage over classical algorithms for ground state energy problems is an outstanding open problem in quantum computation. We experimentally demonstrate that a quantum algorithm can outperform classical selected configuration interaction (SCI) methods, a key family of techniques used in computational chemistry and condensed matter physics. We construct a class of local Hamiltonian problems with sparse ground states, and show that SCI fails to find the ground state of a 49-qubit instance. We then show that sample-based Krylov quantum diagonalization, run on an IBM Heron R3 processor, succeeds at the same task. While the problem is solvable classically using iterative solvers designed to target our Hamiltonian construction, this work resolves the question of whether a sample-based quantum diagonalization algorithm can outperform standard SCI heuristics.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Measurement-Based Preparation of Higher-Dimensional AKLT States and Their Quantum Computational Power

We investigate a constant-time, fusion measurement-based scheme to create AKLT states beyond one dimension. We show that it is possible to prepare such states on a given graph up to random spin-1 `decorations', each corresponding to a probabilistic insertion of a vertex along an edge. In investigating their utility in measurement-based quantum computation, we demonstrate that any such randomly decorated AKLT state possesses at least the same computational power as non-random ones, such as those on trivalent planar lattices. For AKLT states on Bethe lattices and their decorated versions we show that there exists a deterministic, constant-time scheme for their preparation. In addition to randomly decorated AKLT states, we also consider random-bond AKLT states, whose construction involves any of the canonical Bell states in the bond degrees of freedom instead of just the singlet in the original construction. Such states naturally emerge upon measuring all the decorative spin-1 sites in the randomly decorated AKLT states. We show that those random-bond AKLT states on trivalent lattices can be converted to encoded random graph states after acting with the same POVM on all sites. We also argue that these random-bond AKLT states possess similar quantum computational power as the original singlet-bond AKLT states via the percolation perspective.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Systematic Construction of Time-Dependent Hamiltonians for Microwave-Driven Josephson Circuits

Time-dependent electromagnetic drives are fundamental for controlling complex quantum systems, including superconducting Josephson circuits. In these devices, accurate time-dependent Hamiltonian models are imperative for predicting their dynamics and designing high-fidelity quantum operations. Existing numerical methods, such as black-box quantization (BBQ) and energy-participation ratio (EPR), excel at modeling the static Hamiltonians of Josephson circuits. However, these techniques do not fully capture the behavior of driven circuits stimulated by external microwave drives, nor do they include a generalized approach to account for the inevitable noise and dissipation that enter through microwave ports. Here, we introduce numerical techniques that leverage classical microwave simulations, efficiently executable in finite-element solvers, to obtain the time-dependent Hamiltonian of microwave-driven superconducting circuits with arbitrary geometries under charge, flux, or mixed electromagnetic modulation. Importantly, our techniques do not rely on a lumped-element description of the superconducting circuit, in contrast to previous approaches to tackling this problem. We demonstrate the versatility of our approach by characterizing the driven properties of realistic circuit devices in complex electromagnetic environments, including coherent dynamics due to charge and flux modulation, as well as drive-induced relaxation and dephasing. Our techniques offer a powerful toolbox for optimizing circuit designs and advancing practical applications in superconducting quantum computing.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Strongly coupled photonic molecules as doubly-coupled oscillators

In this work, we present a field-theoretic model of strongly coupled photonic molecules composed of interacting dielectric cavities in a closed, perfect-electric-conductor domain. Within this setting, we treat the resulting inter-mode couplings non-perturbatively. We demonstrate the predictive power of this framework by showing that supermode eigenfrequencies, field profiles, and mode volumes can be obtained directly from the isolated-cavity modes and dielectric environment, without electromagnetic simulations of the composite structure or numerical fitting. While our model affirms the phenomenological approach of modeling coupled cavity modes as simple coordinate-coupled oscillators in the weak coupling regime, we show that this intuition remarkably breaks down for strong coupling. Instead, we demonstrate that strongly coupled cavity modes are analogous to harmonic oscillators we term as \emph{doubly} coupled, with interactions via electric and magnetic fields appearing as independent coordinate-coordinate and momentum-momentum couplings, respectively. We show that this distinction is not merely cosmetic, but gives rise to observable properties while providing deep insights into the physical mechanism behind previously observed phenomena, such as coupling induced frequency shifts. Finally, we illustrate that the complex interplay of these dual couplings suggests the possibility to realize exotic phenomena that typically only occur in the ultrastrong coupling regime, here predicted to emerge for comparably modest mode splittings within a regime we term pseudo-ultrastrong coupling.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Constrained many-body phases in a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-Higgs lattice gauge theory

We study the ground-state phase diagram of a one-dimensional $\mathbb{Z}_2$ lattice gauge theory coupled to soft-core bosonic matter at unit filling, inspired by the Higgs sector of the standard model. Through a combination of analytical perturbative approaches, exact diagonalization, and density-matrix-renormalization-group simulations, we uncover a rich phase diagram driven by gauge-field-mediated resonant pair hopping and the confinement of single particles. The pair hopping results in a bunching state with superextensive energy and macroscopic particle number fluctuations at strong electric field strengths and weak on-site interactions. The bunching state crosses over into a pair superfluid phase as the on-site interaction increases, characterized by a finite superfluid density and powerlaw-decaying pair correlations. At large on-site interaction strengths and driven by effective interactions induced by the gauge constraint, the superfluid transitions into an incompressible pair Mott insulator phase. At weak field strengths and on-site interactions, we find a plasma-like region, where single bosons exhibit large short-range correlations and the ground state is composed almost equally of states with even and odd local boson occupation. The presence of a bunching state with large number fluctuations, which is difficult to study using classical numerics, motivates experimental realizations in hybrid boson-qubit quantum simulation platforms such as circuit QED, neutral atoms, and trapped ions. Our findings highlight the rich interplay between gauge fields and soft-core bosonic matter.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2025

Co-Designing Spectral Transformation Oracles with Hybrid Oscillator-Qubit Quantum Processors: From Algorithms to Compilation

We co-design a family of quantum eigenvalue transformation oracles that can be efficiently implemented on hybrid discrete/continuous-variable (qubit/qumode) hardware. To illustrate the oracle's representation-theoretic power and near-term experimental accessibility, we encode a Gaussian imaginary time evolution spectral filter. As a result, we define a continuous linear combination of unitaries block-encoding. Due to the ancillary qumode's infinite-dimensional nature, continuous variable qumodes constitute a powerful compilation tool for encoding continuous spectral functions without discretization errors while minimizing resource requirements. We then focus on the ubiquitous task of preparing eigenstates in quantum spin models. For completeness, we provide an end-to-end compilation which expresses high-level oracles in terms of an experimentally realizable instruction set architecture in both 1D and 2D. Finally, we examine the leading-order effects of physical errors and highlight open research directions. Our algorithms scale linearly with the spatial extent of the target system and are applicable to both near-term and large-scale quantum processors.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Hybrid Oscillator-Qubit Quantum Processors: Simulating Fermions, Bosons, and Gauge Fields

We develop a hybrid oscillator-qubit processor framework for quantum simulation of strongly correlated fermions and bosons that avoids the boson-to-qubit mapping overhead encountered in qubit hardware. This framework gives exact decompositions of particle interactions such as density-density terms and gauge-invariant hopping, as well as approximate methods based on the Baker-Campbell Hausdorff formulas including the magnetic field term for the $U(1)$ quantum link model in $(2+1)$D. We use this framework to show how to simulate dynamics using Trotterisation, perform ancilla-free partial error detection using Gauss's law, measure non-local observables, estimate ground state energies using a oscillator-qubit variational quantum eigensolver as well as quantum signal processing, and we numerically study the influence of hardware errors in circuit QED experiments. To show the advantages over all-qubit hardware, we perform an end-to-end comparison of the gate complexity for the gauge-invariant hopping term and find an improvement of the asymptotic scaling with the boson number cutoff $S$ from $\mathcal{O}(\log(S)^2)$ to $\mathcal{O}(1)$ in our framework as well as, for bosonic matter, a constant factor improvement of better than $10^4$. We also find an improvement from $\mathcal{O}(\log(S))$ to $\mathcal{O}(1)$ for the $U(1)$ magnetic field term. While our work focusses on an implementation in superconducting hardware, our framework can also be used in trapped ion, and neutral atom hardware. This work establishes digital quantum simulation with hybrid oscillator-qubit hardware as a viable and advantageous method for the study of qubit-boson models in materials science, chemistry, and high-energy physics.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Toward Mixed Analog-Digital Quantum Signal Processing: Quantum AD/DA Conversion and the Fourier Transform

Signal processing stands as a pillar of classical computation and modern information technology, applicable to both analog and digital signals. Recently, advancements in quantum information science have suggested that quantum signal processing (QSP) can enable more powerful signal processing capabilities. However, the developments in QSP have primarily leveraged \emph{digital} quantum resources, such as discrete-variable (DV) systems like qubits, rather than \emph{analog} quantum resources, such as continuous-variable (CV) systems like quantum oscillators. Consequently, there remains a gap in understanding how signal processing can be performed on hybrid CV-DV quantum computers. Here we address this gap by developing a new paradigm of mixed analog-digital QSP. We demonstrate the utility of this paradigm by showcasing how it naturally enables analog-digital conversion of quantum signals -- specifically, the transfer of states between DV and CV quantum systems. We then show that such quantum analog-digital conversion enables new implementations of quantum algorithms on CV-DV hardware. This is exemplified by realizing the quantum Fourier transform of a state encoded on qubits via the free-evolution of a quantum oscillator, albeit with a runtime exponential in the number of qubits due to information theoretic arguments. Collectively, this work marks a significant step forward in hybrid CV-DV quantum computation, providing a foundation for scalable analog-digital signal processing on quantum processors.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2024

Hybrid Oscillator-Qubit Quantum Processors: Instruction Set Architectures, Abstract Machine Models, and Applications

Quantum computing with discrete variable (DV, qubit) hardware is approaching the large scales necessary for computations beyond the reach of classical computers. However, important use cases such as quantum simulations of physical models containing bosonic modes, and quantum error correction are challenging for DV-only systems. Separately, hardware containing native continuous-variable (CV, oscillator) systems has received attention as an alternative approach, yet the universal control of such systems is non-trivial. In this work, we show that hybrid CV-DV hardware offers a great advantage in meeting these challenges, offering a powerful computational paradigm that inherits the strengths of both DV and CV processors. We provide a pedagogical introduction to CV-DV systems and the multiple abstraction layers needed to produce a full software stack connecting applications to hardware. We present a variety of new hybrid CV-DV compilation techniques, algorithms, and applications, including the extension of quantum signal processing concepts to CV-DV systems and strategies to simulate systems of interacting spins, fermions, and bosons. To facilitate the development of hybrid CV-DV processor systems, we introduce formal Abstract Machine Models and Instruction Set Architectures -- essential abstractions that enable developers to formulate applications, compile algorithms, and explore the potential of current and future hardware for realizing fault-tolerant circuits, modules, and processors. Hybrid CV-DV quantum computations are beginning to be performed in superconducting, trapped ion, and neutral atom platforms, and large-scale experiments are set to be demonstrated in the near future. We present a timely and comprehensive guide to this relatively unexplored yet promising approach to quantum computation and providing an architectural backbone to guide future development.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Constant-depth preparation of matrix product states with adaptive quantum circuits

Adaptive quantum circuits, which combine local unitary gates, midcircuit measurements, and feedforward operations, have recently emerged as a promising avenue for efficient state preparation, particularly on near-term quantum devices limited to shallow-depth circuits. Matrix product states (MPS) comprise a significant class of many-body entangled states, efficiently describing the ground states of one-dimensional gapped local Hamiltonians and finding applications in a number of recent quantum algorithms. Recently, it was shown that the AKLT state -- a paradigmatic example of an MPS -- can be exactly prepared with an adaptive quantum circuit of constant-depth, an impossible feat with local unitary gates due to its nonzero correlation length [Smith et al., PRX Quantum 4, 020315 (2023)]. In this work, we broaden the scope of this approach and demonstrate that a diverse class of MPS can be exactly prepared using constant-depth adaptive quantum circuits, outperforming optimal preparation protocols that rely on unitary circuits alone. We show that this class includes short- and long-ranged entangled MPS, symmetry-protected topological (SPT) and symmetry-broken states, MPS with finite Abelian, non-Abelian, and continuous symmetries, resource states for MBQC, and families of states with tunable correlation length. Moreover, we illustrate the utility of our framework for designing constant-depth sampling protocols, such as for random MPS or for generating MPS in a particular SPT phase. We present sufficient conditions for particular MPS to be preparable in constant time, with global on-site symmetry playing a pivotal role. Altogether, this work demonstrates the immense promise of adaptive quantum circuits for efficiently preparing many-body entangled states and provides explicit algorithms that outperform known protocols to prepare an essential class of states.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Deterministic constant-depth preparation of the AKLT state on a quantum processor using fusion measurements

The ground state of the spin-1 Affleck, Kennedy, Lieb and Tasaki (AKLT) model is a paradigmatic example of both a matrix product state and a symmetry-protected topological phase, and additionally holds promise as a resource state for measurement-based quantum computation. Having a nonzero correlation length, the AKLT state cannot be exactly prepared by a constant-depth unitary circuit composed of local gates. In this work, we demonstrate that this no-go limit can be evaded by augmenting a constant-depth circuit with fusion measurements, such that the total preparation time is independent of system size and entirely deterministic. We elucidate our preparation scheme using the language of tensor networks, and furthermore show that the $\mathbb{Z}_2\times\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry of the AKLT state directly affords this speed-up over previously known preparation methods. To demonstrate the practical advantage of measurement-assisted preparation on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices, we carry out our protocol on an IBM Quantum processor. We measure both the string order and entanglement spectrum of prepared AKLT chains and, employing these as metrics, find improved results over the known (purely unitary) sequential preparation approach. We conclude with a demonstration of quantum teleportation using the AKLT state prepared by our measurement-assisted scheme. This work thus serves to provide an efficient strategy to prepare a specific resource in the form of the AKLT state and, more broadly, experimentally demonstrates the possibility for realizable improvement in state preparation afforded by measurement-based circuit depth reduction strategies on NISQ-era devices.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Exact $k$-body representation of the Jaynes-Cummings interaction in the dressed basis: Insight into many-body phenomena with light

Analog quantum simulation - the technique of using one experimentally well-controlled physical system to mimic the behavior of another - has quickly emerged as one of the most promising near term strategies for studying strongly correlated quantum many-body systems. In particular, systems of interacting photons, realizable in solid-state cavity and circuit QED frameworks, for example, hold tremendous promise for the study of nonequilibrium many-body phenomena due to the capability to locally create and destroy photons. These systems are typically modeled using a Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard (JCH) Hamiltonian, named due to similarities with the Bose-Hubbard (BH) model. Here, we present a non-perturbative procedure for transforming the JC Hamiltonian into a dressed operator representation that, in its most general form, admits an infinite sum of bosonic $k$-body terms where $k$ is bound only by the number of excitations in the system. We closely examine this result in both the dispersive and resonant coupling regimes, finding rapid convergence in the former and contributions from $k\gg1$ in the latter. Through extension to a two-site JCH system, we demonstrate that this approach facilitates close inspection of the analogy between the JCH and BH models and its breakdown for resonant light-matter coupling. Finally, we use this framework to survey the many-body character of a two-site JCH for general system parameters, identifying four unique quantum phases and the parameter regimes in which they are realized, thus highlighting phenomena realizable with finite JCH-based quantum simulators beyond the BH model. More broadly, this work is intended to serve as a clear mathematical exposition of bosonic many-body interactions underlying JC-type systems, often postulated through analogy to Kerr-like nonlinear susceptibilities or by matching coefficients to obtain the appropriate eigenvalue spectrum.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Active tuning of hybridized modes in a heterogeneous photonic molecule

From fundamental discovery to practical application, advances in the optical and quantum sciences rely upon precise control of light-matter interactions. Systems of coupled optical cavities are ubiquitous in these efforts, yet design and active modification of the hybridized mode properties remains challenging. In this Letter, we demonstrate the ability to thermally control the degree of hybridization in a heterogeneous photonic molecule composed of a ring resonator strongly coupled to a nanobeam photonic crystal cavity. Combining theory and experiment, we show that the composition of the resulting super-modes can be actively tailored and we derive temperature-dependent analytic expressions for the super-mode profiles, frequencies, and volumes. This work illustrates the potential for actively tunable, designer photonic properties using heterogeneous optical cavity devices.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2019

Direct Observation of Infrared Plasmonic Fano Antiresonances by a Nanoscale Electron Probe

In this Letter, we exploit recent breakthroughs in monochromated aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) to resolve infrared plasmonic Fano antiresonances in individual nanofabricated disk-rod dimers. Using a combination of electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) and theoretical modeling, we investigate and characterize a subspace of the weak coupling regime between quasi-discrete and quasi-continuum localized surface plasmon resonances where infrared plasmonic Fano antiresonances appear. This work illustrates the capability of STEM instrumentation to experimentally observe nanoscale plasmonic responses that were previously the domain only of higher resolution infrared spectroscopies.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗