Probing entanglement in a many-body-localized system Lukin, Alexander; Rispoli, Matthew; Schittko, Robert ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
04/2019, Letnik:
364, Številka:
6437
Journal Article
Recenzirano
An interacting quantum system that is subject to disorder may cease to thermalize owing to localization of its constituents, thereby marking the breakdown of thermodynamics. The key to understanding ...this phenomenon lies in the system's entanglement, which is experimentally challenging to measure. We realize such a many-body-localized system in a disordered Bose-Hubbard chain and characterize its entanglement properties through particle fluctuations and correlations. We observe that the particles become localized, suppressing transport and preventing the thermalization of subsystems. Notably, we measure the development of nonlocal correlations, whose evolution is consistent with a logarithmic growth of entanglement entropy, the hallmark of many-body localization. Our work experimentally establishes many-body localization as a qualitatively distinct phenomenon from localization in noninteracting, disordered systems.
We analyze the dynamics of entanglement entropy in a generic quantum many-body open system from the perspective of quantum information and error corrections. We introduce a random unitary circuit ...model with intermittent projective measurements, in which the degree of information scrambling by the unitary and the rate of projective measurements are independently controlled. This model displays two stable phases, characterized by the volume-law and area-law scaling entanglement entropy in steady states. The transition between the two phases is understood from the point of view of quantum error correction: the chaotic unitary evolution protects quantum information from projective measurements that act as errors. A phase transition occurs when the rate of errors exceeds a threshold that depends on the degree of information scrambling. We confirm these results using numerical simulations and obtain the phase diagram of our model. Our work shows that information scrambling plays a crucial role in understanding the dynamics of entanglement in an open quantum system and relates the entanglement phase transition to changes in quantum channel capacity.
We analyze quantum dynamics of strongly interacting, kinetically constrained many-body systems. Motivated by recent experiments demonstrating surprising long-lived, periodic revivals after quantum ...quenches in Rydberg atom arrays, we introduce a manifold of locally entangled spin states, representable by low-bond dimension matrix product states, and derive equations of motion for them using the time-dependent variational principle. We find that they feature isolated, unstable periodic orbits, which capture the recurrences and represent nonergodic dynamical trajectories. Our results provide a theoretical framework for understanding quantum dynamics in a class of constrained spin models, which allow us to examine the recently suggested explanation of "quantum many-body scarring" Nat. Phys. 14, 745 (2018)NPAHAX1745-247310.1038/s41567-018-0137-5, and establish a possible connection to the corresponding phenomenon in chaotic single-particle systems.
The competition between scrambling unitary evolution and projective measurements leads to a phase transition in the dynamics of quantum entanglement. Here, we demonstrate that the nature of this ...transition is fundamentally altered by the presence of long-range, power-law interactions. For sufficiently weak power laws, the measurement-induced transition is described by conformal field theory, analogous to short-range-interacting hybrid circuits. However, beyond a critical power law, we demonstrate that long-range interactions give rise to a continuum of nonconformal universality classes, with continuously varying critical exponents. We numerically determine the phase diagram for a one-dimensional, long-range-interacting hybrid circuit model as a function of the power-law exponent and the measurement rate. Finally, by using an analytic mapping to a long-range quantum Ising model, we provide a theoretical understanding for the critical power law.
The quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) is a hybrid quantum-classical variational algorithm designed to tackle combinatorial optimization problems. Despite its promise for near-term ...quantum applications, not much is currently understood about the QAOA’s performance beyond its lowest-depth variant. An essential but missing ingredient for understanding and deploying the QAOA is a constructive approach to carry out the outer-loop classical optimization. We provide an in-depth study of the performance of the QAOA on MaxCut problems by developing an efficient parameter-optimization procedure and revealing its ability to exploit nonadiabatic operations. Building on observed patterns in optimal parameters, we propose heuristic strategies for initializing optimizations to find quasioptimalp-level QAOA parameters inOpoly(p)time, whereas the standard strategy of random initialization requires2O(p)optimization runs to achieve similar performance. We then benchmark the QAOA and compare it with quantum annealing, especially on difficult instances where adiabatic quantum annealing fails due to small spectral gaps. The comparison reveals that the QAOA can learn via optimization to utilize nonadiabatic mechanisms to circumvent the challenges associated with vanishing spectral gaps. Finally, we provide a realistic resource analysis on the experimental implementation of the QAOA. When quantum fluctuations in measurements are accounted for, we illustrate that optimization is important only for problem sizes beyond numerical simulations but accessible on near-term devices. We propose a feasible implementation of large MaxCut problems with a few hundred vertices in a system of 2D neutral atoms, reaching the regime to challenge the best classical algorithms.
We propose and analyze a deterministic protocol to generate two-dimensional photonic cluster states using a single quantum emitter via time-delayed quantum feedback. As a physical implementation, we ...consider a single atom or atom-like system coupled to a 1D waveguide with a distant mirror, where guided photons represent the qubits, while the mirror allows the implementation of feedback. We identify the class of many-body quantum states that can be produced using this approach and characterize them in terms of 2D tensor network states.
Motivated by far-reaching applications ranging from quantum simulations of complex processes in physics and chemistry to quantum information processing
, a broad effort is currently underway to build ...large-scale programmable quantum systems. Such systems provide insights into strongly correlated quantum matter
, while at the same time enabling new methods for computation
and metrology
. Here we demonstrate a programmable quantum simulator based on deterministically prepared two-dimensional arrays of neutral atoms, featuring strong interactions controlled by coherent atomic excitation into Rydberg states
. Using this approach, we realize a quantum spin model with tunable interactions for system sizes ranging from 64 to 256 qubits. We benchmark the system by characterizing high-fidelity antiferromagnetically ordered states and demonstrating quantum critical dynamics consistent with an Ising quantum phase transition in (2 + 1) dimensions
. We then create and study several new quantum phases that arise from the interplay between interactions and coherent laser excitation
, experimentally map the phase diagram and investigate the role of quantum fluctuations. Offering a new lens into the study of complex quantum matter, these observations pave the way for investigations of exotic quantum phases, non-equilibrium entanglement dynamics and hardware-efficient realization of quantum algorithms.
Quantum phase transitions (QPTs) involve transformations between different states of matter that are driven by quantum fluctuations
. These fluctuations play a dominant part in the quantum critical ...region surrounding the transition point, where the dynamics is governed by the universal properties associated with the QPT. Although time-dependent phenomena associated with classical, thermally driven phase transitions have been extensively studied in systems ranging from the early Universe to Bose-Einstein condensates
, understanding critical real-time dynamics in isolated, non-equilibrium quantum systems remains a challenge
. Here we use a Rydberg atom quantum simulator with programmable interactions to study the quantum critical dynamics associated with several distinct QPTs. By studying the growth of spatial correlations when crossing the QPT, we experimentally verify the quantum Kibble-Zurek mechanism (QKZM)
for an Ising-type QPT, explore scaling universality and observe corrections beyond QKZM predictions. This approach is subsequently used to measure the critical exponents associated with chiral clock models
, providing new insights into exotic systems that were not previously understood and opening the door to precision studies of critical phenomena, simulations of lattice gauge theories
and applications to quantum optimization
.
Motivated by recent experimental observations of coherent many-body revivals in a constrained Rydberg atom chain, we construct a weak quasilocal deformation of the Rydberg-blockaded Hamiltonian, ...which makes the revivals virtually perfect. Our analysis suggests the existence of an underlying nonintegrable Hamiltonian which supports an emergent SU(2)-spin dynamics within a small subspace of the many-body Hilbert space. We show that such perfect dynamics necessitates the existence of atypical, nonergodic energy eigenstates-quantum many-body scars. Furthermore, using these insights, we construct a toy model that hosts exact quantum many-body scars, providing an intuitive explanation of their origin. Our results offer specific routes to enhancing coherent many-body revivals and provide a step toward establishing the stability of quantum many-body scars in the thermodynamic limit.
Understanding quantum dynamics away from equilibrium is an outstanding challenge in the modern physical sciences. Out-of-equilibrium systems can display a rich variety of phenomena, including ...self-organized synchronization and dynamical phase transitions. More recently, advances in the controlled manipulation of isolated many-body systems have enabled detailed studies of non-equilibrium phases in strongly interacting quantum matter; for example, the interplay between periodic driving, disorder and strong interactions has been predicted to result in exotic 'time-crystalline' phases, in which a system exhibits temporal correlations at integer multiples of the fundamental driving period, breaking the discrete time-translational symmetry of the underlying drive. Here we report the experimental observation of such discrete time-crystalline order in a driven, disordered ensemble of about one million dipolar spin impurities in diamond at room temperature. We observe long-lived temporal correlations, experimentally identify the phase boundary and find that the temporal order is protected by strong interactions. This order is remarkably stable to perturbations, even in the presence of slow thermalization. Our work opens the door to exploring dynamical phases of matter and controlling interacting, disordered many-body systems.