Abstract
Quantum field theories describe a variety of fundamental phenomena in physics. However, their study often involves cumbersome numerical simulations. Quantum simulators, on the other hand, may outperform classical computational capacities due to their potential scalability. Here we report an experimental realization of a quantum simulation of fermion–antifermion scattering mediated by bosonic modes, using a multilevel trapped ion, which is a simplified model of fermion scattering in both perturbative and non-perturbative quantum electrodynamics. The simulated model exhibits prototypical features in quantum field theory including particle pair creation and annihilation, as well as self-energy interactions. These are experimentally observed by manipulating four internal levels of a 171Yb+ trapped ion, where we encode the fermionic modes, and two motional degrees of freedom that simulate the bosonic modes. Our experiment establishes an avenue towards the efficient implementation of field modes, which may prove useful in studies of quantum field theories including non-perturbative regimes.
Highlights
Quantum field theories describe a variety of fundamental phenomena in physics
Our approach could in principle be scaled up by progressively adding more ions allowing the codification of additional fermionic and bosonic field modes, which may lead to full quantum simulations of quantum field theories (QFTs) such as quantum electrodynamics (QEDs)[22]
Based on the proposal of ref.[23], our experimental quantum simulation of finite-number interacting quantized field modes includes all terms of the Dyson expansion
Summary
Quantum field theories describe a variety of fundamental phenomena in physics. their study often involves cumbersome numerical simulations. The simulated model exhibits prototypical features in quantum field theory including particle pair creation and annihilation, as well as self-energy interactions These are experimentally observed by manipulating four internal levels of a 171Yb+ trapped ion, where we encode the fermionic modes, and two motional degrees of freedom that simulate the bosonic modes. It would be desirable to realize a quantum simulator that involves interacting fermionic and bosonic fields as described by quantum field theories (QFTs)[22] In this sense, fermionic modes could be mapped in the ion internal levels, whereas bosonic modes could be naturally encoded in the motional degrees of freedom. We report an experimental quantum simulation of interacting fermionic and bosonic quantum field modes, where fermions are encoded in four internal levels of an 171Yb+ ion and the bosonic modes in the motional degrees of freedom, following the proposal by Casanova et al.[23]. Our approach could in principle be scaled up by progressively adding more ions allowing the codification of additional fermionic and bosonic field modes, which may lead to full quantum simulations of QFTs such as quantum electrodynamics (QEDs)[22]
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