Kevin Hémery

Superconducting pairing correlations on a trapped-ion quantum computer

Etienne Granet [1], Sheng-Hsuan Lin [1], Kevin Hémery, Reza Haghshenas [2], Pablo Andres-Martinez [3], David T. Stephen [2], Anthony Ransford [2], Jake Arkinstall [3,2], M. S. Allman, Pete Campora [2], Samuel F. Cooper [2], Robert D. Delaney [2], Joan M. Dreiling [2], Brian Estey [2], Caroline Figgatt [2], Cameron Foltz [2], John P. Gaebler [2], Alex Hall [2], Ali Husain [4], Akhil Isanaka [2], Colin J. Kennedy [2], Nikhil Kotibhaskar [5], Ivaylo S. Madjarov [2], Michael Mills [2], Alistair R. Milne [5], Annie J. Park [2], Adam P. Reed [2], Brian Neyenhuis [2], Justin G. Bohnet [2], Michael Foss-Feig [2], Andrew C. Potter [2], Ramil Nigmatullin [3], Mohsin Iqbal [1], Henrik Dreyer [1]

Abstract

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.