Jiří Minář

We determine the exact asymptotic many-body wavefunction of a spin-$s$ Richardson-Gaudin model with a coupling inversely proportional to time, for time evolution starting from the ground state at $t = 0^+$ and for arbitrary $s$. Contrary to common belief, the resulting wavefunction cannot be derived from the spin-$1/2$ case by merging spins, but instead requires independent treatment for each spin size. The steady state is non-thermal and, in contrast to the spin-$1/2$ case, does not conform to a natural Generalized Gibbs Ensemble. We show that mean-field theory is exact for any product of a finite number of spin operators on different sites. We discuss how these findings can be probed in cavity QED and trapped ion experiments.

Quantum states that are symmetric under particle exchange play a crucial role in fields such as quantum metrology and quantum error correction. We use a variational circuit composed of global one-axis twisting and global rotations to efficiently prepare arbitrary symmetric states, i.e. any superposition of Dicke states. The circuit does not require local addressability or ancilla qubits and thus can be readily implemented in a variety of experimental platforms including trapped-ion quantum simulators and cavity QED systems. We provide analytic and numerical evidence that any $N$-qubit symmetric state can be prepared in $2N/3$ steps. We demonstrate the utility of our protocol by preparing (i) metrologically useful $N$-qubit Dicke states of up to $N = 300$ qubits in $\mathcal{O}(1)$ gate steps with theoretical infidelities $1-\mathcal{F} < 10^{-3}$, (ii) the $N = 9$ Ruskai codewords in $P = 4$ gate steps with $1-\mathcal{F} < 10^{-4}$, and (iii) the $N = 13$ Gross codewords in $P = 7$ gate steps with $1-\mathcal{F} < 10^{-4}$. Focusing on trapped-ion platforms, for the $N = 9$ Ruskai and $N = 13$ Gross codewords we estimate that the protocol achieves fidelities $\gtrsim 95\%$ in the presence of typical experimental noise levels, thus providing a pathway to the preparation of a wide range of useful highly-entangled quantum states.

We combine quantum optimal control with a variational ansatz based on non-Gaussian states for fast, non-adiabatic preparation of quantum many-body states. We demonstrate this on the example of the spin-boson model, and use a multi-polaron ansatz to prepare near-critical ground states. For one mode, we achieve a reduction in infidelity of up to $\approx 60$ ($\approx 20$) times compared to linear (optimised local adiabatic) ramps respectively; for many modes we achieve a reduction in infidelity of up to $\approx 5$ times compared to non-adiabatic linear ramps. Further, we show that the typical control quantity, the leakage from the variational manifold, provides only a loose bound on the state's fidelity. Instead, in analogy to the bond dimension of matrix product states, we suggest a controlled convergence criterion based on the number of polarons. Finally, motivated by the possibility of realizations in trapped ions, we study the dynamics of a system with bath properties going beyond the paradigm of (sub/super) Ohmic couplings. We apply the ansatz to the study of the out-of-time-order-correlator (OTOC) of the bath modes in a non-perturbative regime. The scrambling time is found to be a robust feature only weakly dependent on the details of the coupling between the bath and the spin.