Since the discovery of topological insulators, many topological phases have been predicted and realized in a range of different systems, providing both fascinating physics and exciting opportunities ...for devices. And although new materials are being developed and explored all the time, the prospects for probing exotic topological phases would be greatly enhanced if they could be realized in systems that were easily tuned. The flexibility offered by ultracold atoms could provide such a platform. Here, we review the tools available for creating topological states using ultracold atoms in optical lattices, give an overview of the theoretical and experimental advances and provide an outlook towards realizing strongly correlated topological phases.
We present a scheme for measuring Rényi entropies in generic atomic Hubbard and spin models using single copies of a quantum state and for partitions in arbitrary spatial dimensions. Our approach is ...based on the generation of random unitaries from random quenches, implemented using engineered time-dependent disorder potentials, and standard projective measurements, as realized by quantum gas microscopes. By analyzing the properties of the generated unitaries and the role of statistical errors, with respect to the size of the partition, we show that the protocol can be realized in existing quantum simulators and used to measure, for instance, area law scaling of entanglement in two-dimensional spin models or the entanglement growth in many-body localized systems.
The key to explaining and controlling a range of quantum phenomena is to study how information propagates around many-body systems. Quantum dynamics can be described by particle-like carriers of ...information that emerge in the collective behaviour of the underlying system, the so-called quasiparticles. These elementary excitations are predicted to distribute quantum information in a fashion determined by the system's interactions. Here we report quasiparticle dynamics observed in a quantum many-body system of trapped atomic ions. First, we observe the entanglement distributed by quasiparticles as they trace out light-cone-like wavefronts. Second, using the ability to tune the interaction range in our system, we observe information propagation in an experimental regime where the effective-light-cone picture does not apply. Our results will enable experimental studies of a range of quantum phenomena, including transport, thermalization, localization and entanglement growth, and represent a first step towards a new quantum-optic regime of engineered quasiparticles with tunable nonlinear interactions.
We discuss a scheme to measure the many-body entanglement growth during quench dynamics with bosonic atoms in optical lattices. By making use of a 1D or 2D setup in which two copies of the same state ...are prepared, we show how arbitrary order Rényi entropies can be extracted by using tunnel coupling between the copies and measurement of the parity of on-site occupation numbers, as has been performed in recent experiments. We illustrate these ideas for a superfluid-Mott insulator quench in the Bose-Hubbard model, and also for hard-core bosons, and show that the scheme is robust against imperfections in the measurements.
The properties of a strongly correlated many-body quantum system, from the presence of topological order to the onset of quantum criticality, leave a footprint in its entanglement spectrum. The ...entanglement spectrum is composed by the eigenvalues of the density matrix representing a subsystem of the whole original system, but its direct measurement has remained elusive due to the lack of direct experimental probes. Here we show that the entanglement spectrum of the ground state of a broad class of Hamiltonians becomes directly accessible via the quantum simulation and spectroscopy of a suitably constructed entanglement Hamiltonian, building on the Bisognano–Wichmann theorem of axiomatic quantum field theory. This theorem gives an explicit physical construction of the entanglement Hamiltonian, identified as the Hamiltonian of the many-body system of interest with spatially varying couplings. On this basis, we propose a scalable recipe for the measurement of a system’s entanglement spectrum via spectroscopy of the corresponding Bisognano–Wichmann Hamiltonian realized in synthetic quantum systems, including atoms in optical lattices and trapped ions. We illustrate and benchmark this scenario on a variety of models, spanning phenomena as diverse as conformal field theories, topological order and quantum phase transitions.
We study the dissipative dynamics and the formation of entangled states in driven cascaded quantum networks, where multiple systems are coupled to a common unidirectional bath. Specifically, we ...identify the conditions under which emission and coherent reabsorption of radiation drives the whole network into a pure stationary state with non-trivial quantum correlations between the individual nodes. We illustrate this effect in more detail for the example of cascaded two-level systems, where we present an explicit preparation scheme that allows one to tune the whole network through 'bright' and 'dark' states associated with different multi-partite entanglement patterns. In a complementary setting consisting of cascaded nonlinear cavities, we find that two cavity modes can be driven into a non-Gaussian entangled dark state. Potential realizations of such cascaded networks with optical and microwave photons are discussed.
Quantum-enhanced measurements hold the promise to improve high-precision sensing ranging from the definition of time standards to the determination of fundamental constants of nature. However, ...quantum sensors lose their sensitivity in the presence of noise. To protect them, the use of quantum error-correcting codes has been proposed. Trapped ions are an excellent technological platform for both quantum sensing and quantum error correction. Here we present a quantum error correction scheme that harnesses dissipation to stabilize a trapped-ion qubit. In our approach, always-on couplings to an engineered environment protect the qubit against spin-flips or phase-flips. Our dissipative error correction scheme operates in a continuous manner without the need to perform measurements or feedback operations. We show that the resulting enhanced coherence time translates into a significantly enhanced precision for quantum measurements. Our work constitutes a stepping stone towards the paradigm of self-correcting quantum information processing.
SU(N) symmetry can emerge in a quantum system with N single-particle spin states when spin is decoupled from interparticle interactions. Taking advantage of the high measurement precision offered by ...an ultrastable laser, we report a spectroscopic observation of SU(N ≤ 10) symmetry in 87Sr. By encoding the electronic orbital degree of freedom in two clock states while keeping the system open to as many as 10 nuclear spin sublevels, we probed the non-equilibrium two-orbital SU(N) magnetism via Ramsey spectroscopy of atoms confined in an array of two-dimensional optical traps; we studied the spin-orbital quantum dynamics and determined the relevant interaction parameters. This study lays the groundwork for using alkaline-earth atoms as testbeds for important orbital models.
We discuss how a lattice Schwinger model can be realized in a linear ion trap, allowing a detailed study of the physics of Abelian lattice gauge theories related to one-dimensional quantum ...electrodynamics. Relying on the rich quantum-simulation toolbox available in state-of-the-art trapped-ion experiments, we show how one can engineer an effectively gauge-invariant dynamics by imposing energetic constraints, provided by strong Ising-like interactions. Applying exact diagonalization to ground-state and time-dependent properties, we study the underlying microscopic model and discuss undesired interaction terms and other imperfections. As our analysis shows, the proposed scheme allows for the observation in realistic setups of spontaneous parity- and charge-symmetry breaking, as well as false-vacuum decay. Besides an implementation aimed at larger ion chains, we also discuss a minimal setting, consisting of only four ions in a simpler experimental setup, which enables us to probe basic physical phenomena related to the full many-body problem. The proposal opens a new route for analog quantum simulation of high-energy and condensed-matter models where gauge symmetries play a prominent role.
There is a significant ongoing effort in realizing quantum annealing with different physical platforms. The challenge is to achieve a fully programmable quantum device featuring coherent adiabatic ...quantum dynamics. Here we show that combining the well-developed quantum simulation toolbox for Rydberg atoms with the recently proposed Lechner-Hauke-Zoller (LHZ) architecture allows one to build a prototype for a coherent adiabatic quantum computer with all-to-all Ising interactions and, therefore, a platform for quantum annealing. In LHZ an infinite-range spin-glass is mapped onto the low energy subspace of a spin-1/2 lattice gauge model with quasi-local four-body parity constraints. This spin model can be emulated in a natural way with Rubidium and Caesium atoms in a bipartite optical lattice involving laser-dressed Rydberg-Rydberg interactions, which are several orders of magnitude larger than the relevant decoherence rates. This makes the exploration of coherent quantum enhanced optimization protocols accessible with state-of-the-art atomic physics experiments.
PDF
