We demonstrate nonequilibrium steady-state photon transport through a chain of five coupled artificial atoms simulating the driven-dissipative Bose-Hubbard model. Using transmission spectroscopy, we ...show that the system retains many-particle coherence despite being coupled strongly to two open spaces. We find that cross-Kerr interaction between system states allows high-contrast spectroscopic visualization of the emergent energy bands. For vanishing disorder, we observe the transition of the system from the linear to nonlinear regime of photon blockade in excellent agreement with the input-output theory. Finally, we show how controllable disorder introduced to the system suppresses nonlocal photon transmission. We argue that proposed architecture may be applied to analog simulation of many-body Floquet dynamics with even larger arrays of artificial atoms paving an alternative way towards quantum supremacy.
We point out that superconducting quantum computers are prospective for the simulation of the dynamics of spin models far from equilibrium, including nonadiabatic phenomena and quenches. The ...important advantage of these machines is that they are programmable, so that different spin models can be simulated in the same chip, as well as various initial states can be encoded into it in a controllable way. This opens an opportunity to use superconducting quantum computers in studies of fundamental problems of statistical physics such as the absence or presence of thermalization in the free evolution of a closed quantum system depending on the choice of the initial state as well as on the integrability of the model. In the present paper, we performed proof-of-principle digital simulations of two spin models, which are the central spin model and the transverse-field Ising model, using 5- and 16-qubit superconducting quantum computers of the IBM Quantum Experience. We found that these devices are able to reproduce some important consequences of the symmetry of the initial state for the system’s subsequent dynamics, such as the excitation blockade. However, lengths of algorithms are currently limited due to quantum gate errors. We also discuss some heuristic methods which can be used to extract valuable information from the imperfect experimental data.
Quantum walks are an analog of classical random walks in quantum systems. Quantum walks have smaller hitting times compared to classical random walks on certain types of graphs, leading to a quantum ...advantage of quantum-walks-based algorithms. An important feature of quantum walks is that they are accompanied by the excitation transfer from one site to another, and a moment of hitting the destination site is characterized by the maximum probability amplitude of observing the excitation on this site. It is therefore prospective to consider such problems as candidates for quantum advantage demonstration, since gate errors can smear out a peak in the transfer probability as a function of time, nevertheless leaving it distinguishable. We investigate the influence of quantum noise on hitting time and fidelity of a typical quantum walk problem—a perfect state transfer (PST) over a qubit chain. We simulate dynamics of a single excitation over the chain of qubits in the presence of typical noises of a quantum processor (homogeneous and inhomogeneous Pauli noise, crosstalk noise, thermal relaxation, and dephasing noise). We find that Pauli noise mostly smears out a peak in the fidelity of excitation transfer, while crosstalks between qubits mostly affect the hitting time. Knowledge about these noise patterns allows us to propose an error mitigation procedure, which we use to refine the results of running the PST on a simulator of a noisy quantum processor.
It is known that solutions of Richardson equations can be represented as stationary points of the 'energy' of classical free charges on the plane. We suggest considering the 'probabilities' of the ...system of charges occupying certain states in the configurational space at the effective temperature given by the interaction constant, which goes to zero in the thermodynamical limit. It is quite remarkable that the expression of 'probability' has similarities with the square of the Laughlin wavefunction. Next, we introduce the 'partition function', from which the ground state energy of the initial quantum-mechanical system can be determined. The 'partition function' is given by a multidimensional integral, which is similar to the Selberg integrals appearing in conformal field theory and random-matrix models. As a first application of this approach, we consider a system with the constant density of energy states at arbitrary filling of the energy interval where potential acts. In this case, the 'partition function' is rather easily evaluated using properties of the Vandermonde matrix. Our approach thus yields a quite simple and short way to find the ground state energy, which is shown to be described by a single expression all over from the dilute to the dense regime of pairs. It also provides additional insight into the physics of Cooper-paired states.
We propose a realization of two remarkable effects of Dicke physics in quantum simulation of light-matter many-body interactions with artificial quantum systems. These effects are a superradiant ...decay of an ensemble of qubits and the opposite radiation trapping effect. We show that both phenomena coexist in the crossover regime of a 'moderately bad' single-mode cavity coupled to the qubit subsystem. Depending on the type of the initial state and on the presence of multipartite entanglement in it, the dynamical features can be opposite resulting either in the superradiance or in the radiation trapping despite of the fact that the initial state contains the same number of excited qubits. The difference originates from the symmetrical or nonsymmetrical character of the initial wave function of the ensemble, which corresponds to indistinguishable or distinguishable emitters. We argue that a coexistence of both effects can be used in dynamical quantum simulators to demonstrate realization of Dicke physics, effects of multipartite quantum entanglement, as well as quantum interference and thus to deeply probe quantum nature of these artificial quantum systems.
We analyze conditions of applicability of grand-canonical mean-field Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer theory to the evaluation of an interaction energy in the ground state of small-sized superconductors. We ...argue that this theory fails to describe correctly an interaction energy, when an average distance between energy levels near the Fermi energy due to the size quantization becomes of the order of the single-pair binding energy. In conventional superconductors, this quantity is much smaller than the superconducting gap.
•We analyze the criterion of applicability of BCS theory to small-sized superconductors.•We focus on the ground state interaction energy.•BCS result for this quantity is accurate provided that level spacing is larger than pair binding energy.•This quantity can be much smaller than the gap.
► We develop a perturbation expansion for the Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer Hamiltonian. ► We show that deviations from mean-field results are underextensive for relevant operators for any order of the ...perturbation theory. ► We discuss the relation between the BCS wave function and the exact wave function, which can be found by using Richardson approach.
The Bogoliubov approach to superconductivity provides a strong mathematical support to the wave function ansatz proposed by Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer (BCS). Indeed, this ansatz — with all pairs condensed into the same state — corresponds to the ground state of the Bogoliubov Hamiltonian. Yet, this Hamiltonian only is part of the BCS Hamiltonian. As a result, the BCS ansatz definitely differs from the BCS Hamiltonian ground state. This can be directly shown either through a perturbative approach starting from the Bogoliubov Hamiltonian, or better by analytically solving the BCS Schrödinger equation along Richardson–Gaudin exact procedure. Still, the BCS ansatz leads not only to the correct extensive part of the ground state energy for an arbitrary number of pairs in the energy layer where the potential acts — as recently obtained by solving Richardson–Gaudin equations analytically — but also to a few other physical quantities such as the electron distribution, as here shown. The present work also considers arbitrary filling of the potential layer and evidences the existence of a super dilute and a super dense regime of pairs, with a gap different from the usual gap. These regimes constitute the lower and upper limits of density-induced BEC–BCS cross-over in Cooper pair systems.
We point out that realization of quantum communication protocols in programmable quantum computers provides a deep benchmark for capabilities of real quantum hardware. Particularly, it is prospective ...to focus on measurements of entropy-based characteristics of the performance and to explore whether a “quantum regime” is preserved. We perform proof-of-principle implementations of superdense coding and quantum key distribution BB84 using 5- and 16-qubit superconducting quantum processors of IBM Quantum Experience. We focus on the ability of these quantum machines to provide an efficient transfer of information between distant parts of the processors by placing Alice and Bob at different qubits of the devices. We also examine the ability of quantum devices to serve as quantum memory and to store entangled states used in quantum communication. Another issue we address is an error mitigation. Although it is at odds with benchmarking, this problem is nevertheless of importance in a general context of quantum computation with noisy quantum devices. We perform such a mitigation and noticeably improve some results.
We consider an exactly solvable inhomogeneous Dicke model which describes an interaction between a disordered ensemble of two-level systems with single mode boson field. The existing method for ...evaluation of Richardson–Gaudin equations in the thermodynamical limit is extended to the case of Bethe equations in Dicke model. Using this extension, we present expressions both for the ground state and lowest excited states energies as well as leading-order finite-size corrections to these quantities for an arbitrary distribution of individual spin energies. We then evaluate these quantities for an equally-spaced distribution (constant density of states). In particular, we study evolution of the spectral gap and other related quantities. We also reveal regions on the phase diagram, where finite-size corrections are of particular importance.