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arXiv:2003.07399 · Physical Review Letters

Unsupervised Machine Learning of Quantum Phase Transitions Using Diffusion Maps

Alexander Lidiak, Zhexuan Gong

Published Nov 24, 2020• 55 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Experimental quantum simulators have become large and complex enough that discovering new physics from the huge amount of measurement data can be quite challenging, especially when little theoretical understanding of the simulated model is available. Unsupervised machine learning methods are particularly promising in overcoming this challenge. For the specific task of learning quantum phase transitions, unsupervised machine learning methods have primarily been developed for phase transitions characterized by simple order parameters, typically linear in the measured observables. However, such methods often fail for more complicated phase transitions, such as those involving incommensurate phases, valence-bond solids, topological order, and many-body localization. We show that the diffusion map method, which performs nonlinear dimensionality reduction and spectral clustering of the measurement data, has significant potential for learning such complex phase transitions unsupervised. This method may work for measurements of local observables in a single basis and is thus readily applicable to many experimental quantum simulators as a versatile tool for learning various quantum phases and phase transitions.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.125.225701

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Abstract Characterizing quantum many-body phase structure is a major goal for quantum simulation. Here, we employ an unsupervised learning approach based on diffusion maps to learn phase transitions in bosonic lattice systems described by Bose–Hubbard type models, which can be realized in ultracold atoms and related quantum simulation platforms. We demonstrate that this approach identifies phase structure across distinct settings without prior knowledge of order parameters or handcrafted observables, including ground-state transitions involving symmetry-protected topological phases and nonequilibrium regimes distinguishing ergodic and many-body localized behavior. Our results indicate that the approach has the potential for direct application to experimentally accessible measurement data for learning quantum phases in current quantum simulators.
The discovery of topological features of quantum states plays a central role in modern condensed matter physics and various artificial systems. Due to the absence of local order parameters, the detection of topological phase transitions remains a challenge. Machine learning may provide effective methods for identifying topological features. In this work, we show that manifold learning can successfully retrieve topological quantum phase transitions in momentum space. Our results show that the Chebyshev distance (CD) between two data points can successfully capture the main features of topological phase transitions, while the widely used Euclidean distance in general fails. The similarity matrix built upon the CD thus naturally exhibits uncorrelated cluster structures, corresponding to distinct sectors in the topological phase diagram. Then a diffusion map is applied to implement dimensionality reduction and to learn about topological quantum phase transitions in an unsupervised manner. Our demonstrations on the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model, the 2D Qi-Wu-Zhang (QWZ) model, and the quenched SSH model show the capability of generic unsupervised learning, when equipped with a suitable distance metric, in exploring topological quantum phase transitions.
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