Simone Montangero

Quantum many-body scarring (QMBS) is an intriguing mechanism of weak ergodicity breaking that has recently spurred significant attention. Particularly prominent in Abelian lattice gauge theories (LGTs), an open question is whether QMBS nontrivially arises in non-Abelian LGTs. Here, we present evidence of robust QMBS in a non-Abelian SU(2) LGT with dynamical matter. Starting in product states that require little experimental overhead, we show that prominent QMBS arises for certain quenches, facilitated through meson and baryon-antibaryon excitations, highlighting its non-Abelian nature. The uncovered scarred dynamics manifests as long-lived coherent oscillations in experimentally accessible local observables as well as prominent revivals in the state fidelity. Our findings bring QMBS to the realm of non-Abelian LGTs, highlighting the intimate connection between scarring and gauge symmetry, and are amenable for observation in a recently proposed trapped-ion qudit quantum computer.

We present a quantum simulation strategy for a (1+1)D SU(2) non-abelian lattice gauge theory with dynamical matter, a hardcore-gluon Hamiltonian Yang-Mills, tailored to a six-level trapped-ion qudit quantum processor, as recently experimentally realized. We employ a qudit encoding fulfilling gauge invariance, an SU(2) Gauss law. We discuss the experimental feasibility of generalized Mölmer-Sörensen gates used to efficiently simulate the dynamics. We illustrate how a shallow circuit with these resources is sufficient to implement scalable digital quantum simulation of the model. We also numerically show that this model, albeit simple, can dynamically manifest physically-relevant properties specific to non-abelian field theories, such as baryon excitations.

Cellular automata are interacting classical bits that display diverse emergent behaviors, from fractals to random-number generators to Turing-complete computation. We discover that quantum cellular automata (QCA) can exhibit complexity in the sense of the complexity science that describes biology, sociology, and economics. QCA exhibit complexity when evolving under "Goldilocks rules" that we define by balancing activity and stasis. Our Goldilocks rules generate robust dynamical features (entangled breathers), network structure and dynamics consistent with complexity, and persistent entropy fluctuations. Present-day experimental platforms -- Rydberg arrays, trapped ions, and superconducting qubits -- can implement our Goldilocks protocols, making testable the link between complexity science and quantum computation exposed by our QCA.

We propose a protocol for measurement of the phonon number distribution of a harmonic oscillator based on selective mapping to a discrete spin-1/2 degree of freedom. We consider a system of a harmonically trapped ion, where a transition between two long lived states can be driven with resolved motional sidebands. The required unitary transforms are generated by amplitude-modulated polychromatic radiation fields, where the time-domain ramps are obtained from numerical optimization by application of the Chopped RAndom Basis (CRAB) algorithm. We provide a detailed analysis of the scaling behavior of the attainable fidelities and required times for the mapping transform with respect to the size of the Hilbert space. As one application we show how the mapping can be employed as a building block for experiments which require measurement of the work distribution of a quantum process.

We study the crossover from classical to quantum phase transitions at zero temperature within the framework of $φ^4$ theory. The classical transition at zero temperature can be described by the Landau theory, turning into a quantum Ising transition with the addition of quantum fluctuations. We perform a calculation of the transition line in the regime where the quantum fluctuations are weak. The calculation is based on a renormalization group analysis of the crossover between classical and quantum transitions, and is well controlled even for space-time dimensionality $D$ below 4. In particular, for $D=2$ we obtain an analytic expression for the transition line which is valid for a wide range of parameters, as confirmed by numerical calculations based on the Density Matrix Renormalization Group. This behavior could be tested by measuring the phase diagram of the linear-zigzag instability in systems of trapped ions or repulsively-interacting dipoles.

Ions of the same charge inside confining potentials can form crystalline structures which can be controlled by means of the ions density and of the external trap parameters. In particular, a linear chain of trapped ions exhibits a transition to a zigzag equilibrium configuration, which is controlled by the strength of the transverse confinement. Studying this phase transition in the quantum regime is a challenging problem, even when employing numerical methods to simulate microscopically quantum many-body systems. Here we present a compact analytical treatment to map the original long-range problem into a short-range quantum field theory on a lattice. We provide a complete numerical architecture, based on Density Matrix Renormalization Group, to address the effective quantum phi-four model. This technique is instrumental in giving a complete characterization of the phase diagram, as well as pinpoint the universality class of the criticality.