We experimentally compute relativistic and correlation effects in the atomic properties by using a superconducting qubit processor. Specifically, we compute the relativistic ground-state energies and magnetic-dipole hyperfine structure constants for four Li-like atomic systems ranging from very light to moderately heavy to very heavy in terms of nuclear charge. A symmetry-conserving Bravyi-Kitaev transformation is used to reduce the original six-qubit problem to a four-qubit problem, which is experimentally contrived by reducing the hardware requirement by employing a virtual two-qubit gate. It enables the simulation of four-qubit circuits using two physical qubits with additional circuit evaluations. The ground-state wave functions, required for computing atomic properties, are obtained by using quantum state tomography. Our results show that the averaged relative errors for the ground-state energies are ≈0.3±1%. However, for the hyperfine structure constants, the mean values of the relative errors are less than 15%, with their estimated upper bound of relative errors of ≈±10% (with the exception of 7.2±47% for neutral Li7). Notably, our results for the hyperfine structure constants exhibit higher sensitivity to errors as compared to energies; a trend which we also confirm through additional numerical simulations. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

In recent years, quantum computing has evolved as an exciting frontier, with the development of numerous algorithms dedicated to constructing quantum circuits that adeptly represent quantum many-body states. However, this domain remains in its early stages and requires further refinement to better understand the effective construction of highly entangled quantum states within quantum circuits. Here, we demonstrate that quantum many-body states can be universally represented using a quantum circuit comprising multiqubit gates. Furthermore, we evaluate the efficiency of a quantum circuit constructed with two-qubit gates in quench dynamics for the transverse-field Ising model. In this specific model, despite the initial state being classical without entanglement, it undergoes long-time evolution, eventually leading to a highly entangled quantum state. Our results reveal that a diamond-shaped quantum circuit, designed to approximate the multiqubit gate-based quantum circuit, remarkably excels in accurately representing the long-time dynamics of the system. Moreover, the diamond-shaped circuit follows the volume law behavior in entanglement entropy, offering a significant advantage over alternative quantum circuit constructions employing two-qubit gates. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Channel simulation using coherence, which refers to realizing a target channel with coherent states and free operations, is a fundamental problem in the quantum resource theory of coherence. The limitations of the accuracy of deterministic channel simulation motivate us to consider the more general probabilistic framework. In this paper, we develop the framework for probabilistic channel simulation using coherence with free operations. When the chosen set of free operations is the maximally incoherent operations, we provide an efficiently computable semidefinite program (SDP) to calculate the maximal success probability and derive the analytic expression of success probability for some special cases. When the chosen set of free operations is the dephasing-covariant incoherent operations (DIO), we show that if the target channel is not a resource nonactivating channel then one cannot simulate it exactly both deterministically and probabilistically. The SDP for maximal success probability of simulating a channel by DIO is also given correspondingly. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Quantum algorithms provide a potential strategy for solving computational problems that are intractable by classical means. Computing the topological invariants of topological matter is one central problem in research on quantum materials, and a variety of numerical approaches for this purpose have been developed. However, the complexity of quantum many-body Hamiltonians makes calculations of topological invariants challenging for interacting systems. Here, we present two quantum circuits for calculating Chern numbers of two-dimensional quantum matter on quantum computers. Both circuits combine a gate-based adiabatic time evolution over the discretized Brillouin zone with particular phase estimation techniques. The first algorithm uses many qubits, and we analyze it using a tensor-network simulator of quantum circuits. The second circuit uses fewer qubits, and we implement it experimentally on a quantum computer based on superconducting qubits. Our results establish a method for computing topological invariants with quantum circuits, taking a step towards characterizing interacting topological quantum matter using quantum computers. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Simulating nonequilibirum dynamics of a quantum many-body system is one of the promising applications of quantum computing. We simulate the time evolution of one-dimensional Z2 lattice gauge theory on IBM’s superconducting 156-qubit device, ibm_fez. We consider the Floquet circuit made of the Trotter decomposition of Hamiltonian evolution and focus on its dynamics toward thermalization. Quantum simulation with the help of error mitigation is successful in running the Floquet circuit made of 38 and 116 qubits up to 10 Trotter steps in the best case. This is enough to reach the early stage of prethermalization. Our work would be a benchmark for the potential power of quantum computing for high-energy physics problems. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Dissipative state engineering is a general term for a protocol which prepares the ground state of a complex many-body Hamiltonian using engineered dissipation or engineered environments. Recently, it was shown that a version of this protocol, where the engineered environment consists of one or more dissipative qubit ancillas tuned to be resonant with the low-energy transitions of a many-body system, resulted in the combined system evolving to reasonable approximation to the ground state. This potentially broadens the applicability of the method beyond nonfrustrated systems, to which it was previously restricted. Here we argue that this approach has an intrinsic limitation because the ancillas, seen as an effective bath by the system in the weak-coupling limit, do not give the detailed balance expected for a true zero-temperature environment. Our argument is based on the study of a similar approach employing linear coupling to bosonic ancillas. We explore overcoming this limitation using a recently developed open quantum systems technique called pseudomodes. With a simple example model of a one-dimensional quantum Ising chain, we show that detailed balance can be fixed, and a more accurate estimation of the ground state obtained, at the cost of two additional unphysical dissipative modes and the extrapolation error of implementing those modes in physical systems. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Striving for higher gate fidelity is crucial not only for enhancing existing noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices, but also for unleashing the potential of fault-tolerant quantum computation through quantum error correction. A recently proposed theoretical scheme, the double-transmon coupler (DTC), aims to achieve both suppressed residual interaction and a fast high-fidelity two-qubit gate simultaneously, particularly for highly detuned qubits. Harnessing the state-of-the-art fabrication techniques and a model-free pulse-optimization process based on reinforcement learning, we translate the theoretical DTC scheme into reality, attaining fidelities of 99.90% for a controlled-Z gate and 99.98% for single-qubit gates. The performance of the DTC scheme demonstrates its potential as a competitive building block for superconducting quantum processors. Published by the American Physical Society 2024