David T. Stephen

Spectral functions measured with angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) provide key insight to elucidate the band structure of materials. Comparison with theory requires computing dynamical one-point functions in some equilibrium state, which can be classically challenging. Their measurement on quantum computers poses multiple problems and comes with a large sampling overhead when standard techniques are used. We introduce an efficient way of measuring spectral functions on a quantum computer by directly modeling the interaction of the system with the environment involved in ARPES experiments. We develop quantum circuits whose local expectation values are proportional to the spectral function $A(k,ω)$ for all momentum $k$ and a specific chosen frequency $ω$. Although coming with a qubit and two-qubit gate overhead, our approach requires $O(N)$ times less sampling than previous approaches, translating into a factor $O(N)$ faster in runtime, and is particularly adapted to ion-trap quantum computers. The algorithm requires to implement a fermionic Fourier transform (FFT). We write out an efficient gate decomposition for generic radix-$n$ FFT and benchmark it on hardware for radix-$3$ on $27$ qubits. We finally demonstrate our algorithm on a Quantinuum System Model H2 ion-trap system, computing the spectral function on a one-dimensional system of $27$ sites, using $54$ qubits.

Cryptography depends on truly unpredictable numbers, but physical sources emit biased or correlated bits. Quantum mechanics enables the amplification of imperfect randomness into nearly perfect randomness, but prior demonstrations have required physically co-located, loophole-free Bell tests, constraining the feasibility of remote operation. Here we realize certified randomness amplification across a network by dynamically probing large, entangled quantum states on Quantinuum's 98-qubit Helios trapped-ion quantum processor. Our protocol is secure even if the remote device acts maliciously or is compromised by an intercepting adversary, provided the samples are generated quickly enough to preclude classical simulation of the quantum circuits. We stream quantum gates in real time to the quantum processor, maintain quantum state coherence for $\approx 0.9$ seconds, and then reveal the measurement bases to the quantum processor only milliseconds before measurement. This limits the time for classical spoofing to 30 ms and constrains the location of hypothetical adversaries to a $4{,}500$ km radius. We achieve a fidelity of 0.586 on random circuits with 64 qubits and 276 two-qubit gates, enabling the amplification of realistic imperfect randomness with a low entropy rate into nearly perfect randomness.

The Fermi-Hubbard model is the starting point for the simulation of many strongly correlated materials, including high-temperature superconductors, whose modelling is a key motivation for the construction of quantum simulation and computing devices. However, the detection of superconducting pairing correlations has so far remained out of reach, both because of their off-diagonal character - which makes them inaccessible to local density measurements - and because of the difficulty of preparing superconducting states. Here, we report measurement of significant pairing correlations in three different regimes of Fermi-Hubbard models simulated on Quantinuum's Helios trapped-ion quantum computer. Specifically, we measure non-equilibrium pairing induced by an electromagnetic field in the half-filled square lattice model, d-wave pairing in an approximate ground state of the checkerboard Hubbard model at $1/6$-doping, and s-wave pairing in a bilayer model relevant to nickelate superconductors. These results show that a quantum computer can reliably create and probe physically relevant states with superconducting pairing correlations, opening a path to the exploration of superconductivity with quantum computers.

Digital quantum matter -- realized when discrete quantum gates approximate continuous time evolution -- is susceptible to heating into chaotic, structureless states. If digitization errors are adequately suppressed, a long-lived transient regime of approximately energy-conserving dynamics can be observed on gate-based quantum computers. Conservation of energy, in turn, enables the exploration of a wide variety of complex behaviors observed in equilibrium systems, ranging from the nontrivial microscopic origins of thermalization itself to the stabilization of effective models hosting exotic emergent properties. Here, we use Quantinuum's system model H2 quantum computer to simulate digitized dynamics of the quantum Ising model, suppressing digitization errors well enough to observe thermalization on timescales that severely challenge classical simulation methods. Relaxation of an inhomogeneous state reveals an emergent hydrodynamics due to approximate energy conservation, and we compute the associated diffusion constant. By reprogramming our simulations to take place on a triangular lattice with periodic boundary conditions, we observe thermalization consistent with emergent gauge and topological constraints resulting from lattice frustration. Our results were enabled by continued advances in two-qubit gate quality (native partial entangler fidelities of $99.94(1)\%$), and establish digital quantum computers as powerful tools for studying (effectively) continuous-time dynamics.

Any quantum computation consists of a sequence of unitary evolutions described by a finite set of Hamiltonians. When this set is taken to consist of only products of Pauli operators, we show that the minimal such set generating $\mathfrak{su}(2^{N})$ contains $2N+1$ elements. We provide a number of examples of such generating sets and furthermore provide an algorithm for producing a sequence of rotations corresponding to any given Pauli rotation, which is shown to have optimal complexity. We also observe that certain sets generate $\mathfrak{su}(2^{N})$ at a faster rate than others, and we show how this rate can be optimized by tuning the fraction of anticommuting pairs of generators. Finally, we briefly comment on implications for measurement-based and trapped ion quantum computation as well as the construction of fault-tolerant gate sets.