Southwest Quantum Information and Technology

Building a general-purpose analog quantum simulator from cold-atom qudits

Presenting Author: Nathan Lysne, University of Arizona
Contributing Author(s): Kevin Kuper Poul Jessen Karthik Chinni Ivan Deutsch

Control over quantum devices has advanced such that analog quantum simulators (AQS) are being used to study quantum phase transitions and other complex many body phenomenon. However, as of yet there is no clear understanding as to how imperfections in the control of the AQS itself impacts the outcome of a simulation. Investigating this relationship is paramount as these platforms grow in scale and complexity beyond classical verification. Utilizing new advances in our control protocol to quickly drive any desired unitary transformation in a d = 16 dimensional Hilbert space, we use the atomic spin of neutral Cs atoms in the electronic ground state as a general-purpose quantum simulator capable of stroboscopically examining a variety of disparate systems in time with high fidelity (>99%). In particular, we will report on initial investigations of Hamiltonians that exhibit chaos and hypersensitivity (the quantum kicked top), quantum phase transitions (the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model), and others with fundamental features of interest to quantum simulation. Experimentally, we have demonstrated that our AQS faithfully captures the evolution of the quantum state over hundreds of time steps, as well as salient global features. Beyond verifying that we are capable of varied simulation tasks, with this high fidelity of control we are able to reintroduce errors in a deliberate fashion to study how our AQS is impacted, in both numerical modeling and experiment.

(Session 5 : Thursday from 5:00pm - 7:00 pm)