arXiv subjects

Markus Heyl

Publications and source records attributed to Markus Heyl.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Superfluidity in active quantum flocks

Active quantum matter has very recently emerged at the intersection between bio- and quantum many-body physics, combining the self-organization of living systems with the coherence of the quantum world. Active quantum systems have been shown to exhibit flocking - a collective phenomenon with no precedent in equilibrium quantum physics. In this work we uncover an unexpected layer of quantum order in active quantum flocks: they can become superfluid. We show that, in addition to the symmetry breaking associated with their directed motion, these flocks can also break an additional U(1) symmetry, giving rise to off-diagonal long-range order. For a microscopic model of active hard-core bosons governed by Lindblad dynamics, we derive an effective long-wavelength description of the single-particle density matrix and demonstrate that the flocking phase develops an instability toward off-diagonal long-range order characteristic of superfluid behavior. Our findings reveal active quantum matter as a promising research direction for discovering exotic nonequilibrium phases of quantum matter.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2026

Quantum motility-induced phase separation

Motility-induced phase separation (MIPS) describes a central clustering phenomenon in active matter systems where particles spontaneously separate into dense and dilute phases even in the absence of interparticle attractive forces. Recent theoretical and experimental efforts have taken the first steps to extend active matter concepts to the quantum level. However, whether a genuine quantum analog of MIPS exists and how quantum coherence would compete or cooperate with the dissipative self-propulsion has remained open so far. Here, we provide evidence that quantum MIPS can occur in a model of active hard-core bosons in one dimension. Our model yields superlinear number fluctuations characteristic of MIPS, leading to microphase separation with large but finite cluster size. Adding nearest-neighbor repulsive interactions, we find numerical evidence for restoring genuine phase separation with a divergent correlation length. Crucially, the clustered steady states maintain a long-distance quantum coherence, revealing a genuinely quantum feature with no classical counterpart. These results provide a foundation for exploring quantum MIPS and suggest that the coherence-activity interplay can generate new types of nonequilibrium quantum states.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Reinforcement Learning to Harness Approximation Errors for Long-Time Quantum Simulation

Accurate digital quantum simulation at long times is limited by the accumulation of errors inherent to approximate simulation. Here we introduce RL-Trotter, a reinforcement-learning framework that treats unavoidable approximation errors as resources for error correction rather than merely imperfections to suppress. We show that low-dimensional information from conservation laws, such as the energy and energy variance, provides a sufficient learning signal to guide the agent, which learns to adapt a single scalar---the next Trotter step size---without access to the target wave function. By optimizing the entire long-time evolution rather than individual steps, RL-Trotter discovers self-correcting sequences in which later errors compensate for those accumulated earlier, increasing the accuracy of the long-time dynamics. The learned policies are intrinsically robust to measurement noise, substantially reducing measurement overhead. They also generalize to previously unseen, physically similar initial states and transfer from small, classically simulable systems to systems an order of magnitude larger. This enables a practical protocol based on classical pretraining followed by direct deployment or limited fine-tuning on quantum hardware. Our results establish a broader perspective for quantum algorithms: errors in approximate evolution can be orchestrated into resources for accurate and resource-efficient quantum dynamics.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Exploring the Relaxation Landscape of a 2D Quantum Magnet on a 256-Qubit Processor

How quantum matter relaxes far from equilibrium is a central open problem in many-body physics, and one for which analog quantum simulators are well positioned to move from confirming theory to discovering new physics. Here, we use a two-dimensional Rydberg atom array of 256 qubits to map the relaxation landscape of the two-dimensional transverse-field Ising model across its phase diagram. Beyond the expected rapid thermalization, we identify two further regimes. The first is a prethermal regime whose dynamics are governed by an effective XY model. The second, and most unexpected, is a crossover regime characterized by a slowdown in relaxation. This slowdown occurs precisely where state-of-the-art classical tensor-network methods lose control at late times, whereas the quantum simulation remains consistent across system sizes. These results establish Rydberg atom arrays as a platform for scientific discovery in nonequilibrium quantum many-body dynamics.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Engineered Randomness for Ubiquitous Quantum-Enhanced Metrology in Exponential-Dimensional Manifolds

The exponential growth of many-body Hilbert space presents a fundamental barrier to quantum technology, obscuring the search for physically significant states within an astronomically vast landscape. Consequently, resources for quantum-enhanced metrology have been largely confined to the symmetric subspace whose dimensionality scales only polynomially with the particle number-leaving the vast majority of the Hilbert space largely unexplored and poorly understood. Here we challenge this paradigm by demonstrating that metrological advantage can arise as a ubiquitous feature across exponential-dimensional manifolds. By tailoring the first-moment structure of random unitaries, we uncover dense manifolds of engineered random states (ERSs) where Heisenberg-limited scaling emerges as a statistically generic property. This ubiquity endows these resource states with inherent resilience against parameter disorder. We experimentally validate this framework on a trapped-ion processor, achieving a metrological enhancement of $6.98 \pm 0.38$ dB beyond the standard quantum limit. Potential applications extend to diverse platforms, ranging from superconducting circuits and waveguide QED to solid-state spins and polar molecules. Our results establish a powerful paradigm where quantum-enhanced precision can be harvested from the exponential vastness of the Hilbert space.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Solving Classical and Quantum Spin Glasses with Deep Boltzmann Quantum States

Variational neural network models have achieved remarkable success in solving ground-state problems of quantum many-body systems. However, addressing classical and quantum spin glasses remains challenging, as disorder and energy frustration give rise to an exponentially large number of local energy minima separated by high-energy barriers, hindering the efficiency of conventional Metropolis-based Monte Carlo methods. To bridge this gap, we introduce Deep Boltzmann Quantum States, a class of neural quantum states inspired by deep Boltzmann machines that inherit efficient block Gibbs sampling. We also propose two key advances in the training algorithm. Firstly, we combine natural-gradient updates with state-of-the-art stochastic optimizers. Secondly, we gradually tune the hardness of the problem Hamiltonian by interpolating from an easy to a hard regime, without the need to closely approximate the instantaneous adiabatic state at intermediate times. We match the exact solution or the best available estimate for several instances of classical and quantum Ising spin-glass models with infinite-range interactions and hundreds of spins. We also solve instances of the NP-hard Job Shop Scheduling Problem exceeding the current limitations of quantum annealing hardware. To summarize, deep neural architectures with efficient global update rules and trained within an annealing-like scheme, provide a powerful framework for solving real-world hard combinatorial optimization and for investigating disordered quantum many-body systems.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2026

Universal Symmetry-Breaking Dynamics at Continuous Phase Transitions: Evidence for a New Dynamical Critical Exponent

Uncovering and understanding universal dynamics in matter far from equilibrium remains a key challenge. In this work, we identify a so far unrecognized form of universal behavior that emerges after a sudden symmetry-breaking quench at continuous phase transitions. Our key observation is that the order-parameter fluctuations in Ising models exhibit a compelling temporal collapse across a wide range of system sizes and quench strengths, indicative of an emergent single-variable scaling form. This phenomenon can be explained by introducing a so far unknown dynamical critical exponent for the underlying continuous phase transition. We find evidence for a lower critical effective dimension of this universal regime: it is observed in the 2D quantum and 3D and 4D classical Ising models, but not in the 1D quantum or 2D classical cases. Our results suggest that our observed universal far-from-equilibrium scaling may extend beyond the Ising models studied here and could more broadly characterize systems with non-conserved order parameters, opening new avenues for exploring universal dynamics both theoretically and in current experimental platforms.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Floquet Many-Body Cages

Many-body cages have very recently emerged as a general route for nonergodic behaviour in quantum matter. Here, we show that new types of many-body cages can be engineered in Floquet circuits with the potential to realize novel nonequilibrium quantum states. For that purpose, we first identify an explicit, general construction of Floquet circuits capable of hosting many-body cages. We then present a generic strategy to engineer and structure Floquet many-body cages. We demonstrate the developed scheme for the quantum hard disk model as a generic constrained model system, realizable for instance in Rydberg atom arrays. We construct Floquet circuits yielding Floquet many-body cages with topological properties and $\pi$-quasienergy modes, implying `time crystalline' spatiotemporal order. Our results can be directly extended to general quantum circuits, thus providing a new tool to engineer nonequilibrium behaviour in driven systems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Real-time Dynamics in 3D for up to 1000 Qubits with Neural Quantum States: Quenches and the Quantum Kibble--Zurek Mechanism

Exponential complexity of many-body wave functions limits accurate numerical simulations of real-time dynamics, especially beyond 1D, where rapid entanglement growth poses severe challenges. Neural Quantum States (NQS) have emerged as a powerful approach for real-time dynamics in 2D, but their scalability and accuracy in 3D have remained an open challenge. Here, we establish NQS as a scalable framework for 3D quantum dynamics by introducing a residual-based convolutional architecture tailored to cubic spin lattices. Focusing on the 3D transverse-field Ising model, we demonstrate that NQS reliably capture distinct quench regimes, including collapse-and-revival dynamics and, most challengingly, the dynamics following a sudden quench to the quantum critical point. We perform finite-rate quenches to the critical point on lattices containing up to $1000$ qubits, an unprecedented system size for numerical simulations of real-time dynamics beyond 1D. This enables the first large-scale numerical demonstration of the 3D quantum Kibble--Zurek mechanism. The QKZM in 3D is particularly intriguing because it lies at the upper critical dimension of the Ising universality class, where the standard power laws are modified by logarithmic factors together with prominent sub-leading logarithmic corrections. By deriving these corrections from renormalization-group flow equations up to two-loop order, we obtain a robust data collapse across all simulated system sizes for the correlation function, the excess energy, and the quantum Fisher information, the latter revealing universal multipartite-entanglement dynamics. In all cases, we find compelling agreement with the expected scaling dimensions. Our findings establish NQS as a scalable and reliable tool for exploring nonequilibrium phenomena in 3D quantum matter and for providing numerical benchmarks for 3D quantum simulators.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Quantum Circuits as a Dynamical Resource to Learn Nonequilibrium Long-Range Order

Equilibrium statistical ensembles impose stringent constraints on phases of quantum matter. For example, the Mermin-Wagner theorem prohibits long-range order in low-dimensional systems beyond the ground state. Here, we show that quantum circuits can learn states of matter with long-range order that are inaccessible in equilibrium. We construct variational quantum circuits that generate symmetry-broken and symmetry-protected topological states with long-range order in one-dimensional systems at finite energy density, where equilibrium states are typically featureless. Importantly, the learned states can exhibit unconventional features with enhanced metrological properties such as a quantum Fisher information close to a GHZ state, but robust against local measurements. Our work establishes coherent quantum dynamics as a powerful resource for engineering nonequilibrium phases of matter, opening a path toward a broader dynamical scope of quantum order beyond the constraints of equilibrium ensembles.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Persistent coherent quantum dynamics in 2D long-range magnets via magnon binding

The dynamics of 2D long-range quantum magnets represents a current frontier in experimental physics such as in Rydberg atomic systems or trapped ions. In this work we address theoretical challenges in understanding these dynamics by combining large-scale neural quantum state simulations with an effective theory. Our findings uncover a mechanism for persistent coherent quantum dynamics and slow relaxation in 2D long-range quantum magnets. Demonstrated on the 2D transverse-field quantum Ising model with power-law decaying interactions, we observe long-lived oscillatory behavior after quenching the system from a ferromagnetic product state. We explain this phenomenon by the formation of magnon bound states, generated by effective attractive long-range magnon interactions. Our results highlight a generic mechanism for long-lived quantum coherence in 2D quantum magnets that can be directly observed in current quantum simulation platforms.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Snapshot renormalization group for quantum matter

Recent advances in quantum simulator experiments enable unprecedented access to quantum many-body states through snapshot measurements of individual many-body configurations. Here, we introduce an exact renormalization group (RG) transformation that can be directly applied to any such snapshot dataset. Our SnapshotRG operates in real space, but can also be directly translated to an RG in the abstract dataspace of measurement configurations, providing a framework for the characterization of quantum many-body systems on a more general level. We demonstrate that snapshot datasets in dataspace exhibit self-similarity at continuous phase transitions, providing an explanation for the recently observed scale-freeness of so-called wavefunction networks. As a consequence, scale invariance extends beyond traditional low-order correlation functions to encompass the full statistical structure of quantum states as contained in their snapshot datasets. Our SnapshotRG can be readily implemented with snapshot data generated by numerical method such as neural quantum states or any quantum simulation platform, offering a versatile tool for characterizing quantum phase transitions and critical phenomena in quantum matter.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Simulating dynamics of correlated matter with neural quantum states

While experimental advancements continue to expand the capabilities to control and probe non-equilibrium quantum matter at an unprecedented level, the numerical simulation of the dynamics of correlated quantum systems remains a pivotal challenge - especially in intermediate spatial dimensions. Neural quantum states are emerging as a new computational tool to investigate the time evolution of many-body quantum systems in previously inaccessible regimes. We review the recent progress in the field with a focus on the different time propagation methods, an overview of the reported applications, and a discussion of the major current challenges.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Quantum computing and artificial intelligence: status and perspectives

This white paper discusses and explores the various points of intersection between quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI). It describes how quantum computing could support the development of innovative AI solutions. It also examines use cases of classical AI that can empower research and development in quantum technologies, with a focus on quantum computing and quantum sensing. The purpose of this white paper is to provide a long-term research agenda aimed at addressing foundational questions about how AI and quantum computing interact and benefit one another. It concludes with a set of recommendations and challenges, including how to orchestrate the proposed theoretical work, align quantum AI developments with quantum hardware roadmaps, estimate both classical and quantum resources - especially with the goal of mitigating and optimizing energy consumption - advance this emerging hybrid software engineering discipline, and enhance European industrial competitiveness while considering societal implications.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Time evolution of the quantum Ising model in two dimensions using Tree Tensor Networks

The numerical simulation of two-dimensional quantum many-body systems away from equilibrium constitutes a major challenge for all known computational methods. We investigate the utility of Tree Tensor Network (TTN) states to solve the dynamics of the quantum Ising model in two dimensions. Within the perturbative regime of small transverse fields, TTNs faithfully reproduce analytically known, but non-trivial and physically interesting results, for lattices up to $16 \times 16$ sites. Limitations of the method related to the rapid growth of entanglement entropy are explored within more general, paradigmatic quench settings. We provide and discuss comprehensive benchmarks regarding the benefit of \emph{GPU} acceleration and the impact of using local operator sums on the performance.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Many-body cages: disorder-free glassiness from flat bands in Fock space, and many-body Rabi oscillations

We introduce many-body caging as a novel mechanism for nonthermal behaviour in quantum matter. We define many-body cages as eigenstates that, through quantum interference, become localised on a subgraph of the many-body state graph. These many-body cages can lead to the formation of flat bands in the many-body spectrum at characteristic, system-independent energies. These flat bands can realize a novel type of glassy eigenspectrum order in the absence of disorder, which we quantify by a band-overlap order parameter with an intricate, possibly fractal, distribution over the many-body state graph. We further show that these many-body cages exhibit distinctive signatures in experimentally accessible quantities, such as through a nonvanishing long-time memory of the initial condition, and many-body Rabi oscillations set by the characteristic flat band energies. While our predictions in principle apply to any constrained quantum system, we demonstrate them here for 2D lattice gauge theories and models relevant for current experiments in Rydberg atoms. We expect that these many-body cages offer a promising route to realize nonequilibrium quantum states with novel properties.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2025

Fractional diffusion without disorder in two dimensions

We analyse how simple local constraints in two dimensions lead a defect to exhibit robust, non-transient, and tunable, subdiffusion. We uncover a rich dynamical phenomenology realised in ice- and dimer-type models. On the microscopic scale the path of a single defect exhibits anomalously long retractions, amounting to dynamical caging in a continuous-time random-walk framework, culminating in an effective fractional diffusion equation. Mapping to a height field yields an effective random walk subject to an emergent (entropic) logarithmic potential, whose strength is tunable, related to the exponent of algebraic ground-state correlations. The defect's path, viewed as non-equilibrium growth process, yields a frontier of fractal dimension of $5/4$, the value for a loop-erased random walk, rather than $4/3$ for simple and self-avoiding random walks. Such frustration/constraint-induced subdiffusion is expected to be relevant to platforms such as artificial spin ice and quantum simulators aiming to realize discrete link models and emergent gauge theories.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Dynamics of defects and interfaces for interacting quantum hard disks

Defects and interfaces are essential to understand the properties of matter. However, studying their dynamics in the quantum regime remains a challenge in particular concerning the regime of two spatial dimensions. Recently, it has been shown that a quantum counterpart of the hard-disk problem on a lattice yields defects and interfaces, which are stable just due to quantum effects while they delocalize and dissolve in an analogous classical stochastic process. Here, we study in more detail the properties of defects and interfaces in this quantum hard-disk problem with a particular emphasis on the stability of these quantum effects upon including perturbations. Specifically, we introduce short-range soft-core interactions between the hard disks. From both analytical arguments and numerical simulations we find that large classes of defects and interfaces remain stable even under such perturbations suggesting that the quantum nature of the dynamics exhibits a large range of robustness. Our findings demonstrate the stability and non-classical behavior of quantum interface dynamics, offering insights into the dynamics of two-dimensional quantum matter and establishing the quantum hard-disk model as a platform for studying unconventional constrained quantum dynamics.

quant-ph↗