P. Hauke

Aiming at a better understanding of anomalous and topological effects in gauge theories out-of-equilibrium, we study the real-time dynamics of a prototype model for CP-violation, the massive Schwinger model with a $θ$-term. We identify dynamical quantum phase transitions between different topological sectors that appear after sufficiently strong quenches of the $θ$-parameter. Moreover, we establish a general dynamical topological order parameter, which can be accessed through fermion two-point correlators and, importantly, which can be applied for interacting theories. Enabled by this result, we show that the topological transitions persist beyond the weak-coupling regime. Finally, these effects can be observed with table-top experiments based on existing cold-atom, superconducting-qubit, and trapped-ion technology. Our work, thus, presents a significant step towards quantum simulating topological and anomalous real-time phenomena relevant to nuclear and high-energy physics.

Quantum statistics have a profound impact on the properties of systems composed of identical particles. In this Letter, we demonstrate that the quantum statistics of a pair of identical massive particles can be probed by a direct measurement of the exchange symmetry of their wave function even in conditions where the particles always remain spatially well separated and thus the exchange contribution to their interaction energy is negligible. We present two protocols revealing the bosonic or fermionic nature of a pair of particles and discuss possible implementations with a pair of trapped atoms or ions.

Gauge theories are fundamental to our understanding of interactions between the elementary constituents of matter as mediated by gauge bosons. However, computing the real-time dynamics in gauge theories is a notorious challenge for classical computational methods. In the spirit of Feynman's vision of a quantum simulator, this has recently stimulated theoretical effort to devise schemes for simulating such theories on engineered quantum-mechanical devices, with the difficulty that gauge invariance and the associated local conservation laws (Gauss laws) need to be implemented. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of a digital quantum simulation of a lattice gauge theory, by realising 1+1-dimensional quantum electrodynamics (Schwinger model) on a few-qubit trapped-ion quantum computer. We are interested in the real-time evolution of the Schwinger mechanism, describing the instability of the bare vacuum due to quantum fluctuations, which manifests itself in the spontaneous creation of electron-positron pairs. To make efficient use of our quantum resources, we map the original problem to a spin model by eliminating the gauge fields in favour of exotic long-range interactions, which have a direct and efficient implementation on an ion trap architecture. We explore the Schwinger mechanism of particle-antiparticle generation by monitoring the mass production and the vacuum persistence amplitude. Moreover, we track the real-time evolution of entanglement in the system, which illustrates how particle creation and entanglement generation are directly related. Our work represents a first step towards quantum simulating high-energy theories with atomic physics experiments, the long-term vision being the extension to real-time quantum simulations of non-Abelian lattice gauge theories.

The static and dynamic properties of many-body quantum systems are often well described by collective excitations, known as quasiparticles. Engineered quantum systems offer the opportunity to study such emergent phenomena in a precisely controlled and otherwise inaccessible way. We present a spectroscopic technique to study artificial quantum matter and use it for characterizing quasiparticles in a many-body system of trapped atomic ions. Our approach is to excite combinations of the system's fundamental quasiparticle eigenmodes, given by delocalised spin waves. By observing the dynamical response to superpositions of such eigenmodes, we extract the system dispersion relation, magnetic order, and even detect signatures of quasiparticle interactions. Our technique is not limited to trapped ions, and it is suitable for verifying quantum simulators by tuning them into regimes where the collective excitations have a simple form.

The key to explaining a wide range of quantum phenomena is understanding how entanglement propagates around many-body systems. Furthermore, the controlled distribution of entanglement is of fundamental importance for quantum communication and computation. In many situations, quasiparticles are the carriers of information around a quantum system and are expected to distribute entanglement in a fashion determined by the system interactions. Here we report on the observation of magnon quasiparticle dynamics in a one-dimensional many-body quantum system of trapped ions representing an Ising spin model. Using the ability to tune the effective interaction range, and to prepare and measure the quantum state at the individual particle level, we observe new quasiparticle phenomena. For the first time, we reveal the entanglement distributed by quasiparticles around a many-body system. Second, for long-range interactions we observe the divergence of quasiparticle velocity and breakdown of the light-cone picture that is valid for short-range interactions. Our results will allow experimental studies of a wide range of phenomena, such as quantum transport, thermalisation, localisation and entanglement growth, and represent a first step towards a new quantum-optical regime with on-demand quasiparticles with tunable non-linear interactions.