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arXiv:2111.11092 · Nature Communications

Quantum simulation of Hawking radiation and curved spacetime with a superconducting on-chip black hole

Yun‐Hao Shi, Run-Qiu Yang, Zhongcheng Xiang, Zi-Yong Ge, Hao Li, Yong-Yi Wang, Kaixuan Huang, Ye Tian, Xiaohui Song, Dongning Zheng, Kai Xu, Rong-Gen Cai, Heng Fan

Published Jun 5, 2023• 68 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract Hawking radiation is one of the quantum features of a black hole that can be understood as a quantum tunneling across the event horizon of the black hole, but it is quite difficult to directly observe the Hawking radiation of an astrophysical black hole. Remarkable experiments of analogue black holes on various platforms have been performed. However, due to the experimental difficulty of accurately constructing curved spacetime and precisely measuring the thermal spectrum, Hawking radiation and its quantum nature, such as entanglement, have not been adequately investigated. Based on the recent architecture breakthrough of tunable couplers for superconducting processors, we experimentally realize an analogue black hole using our newly developed chip with a chain of 10 superconducting transmon qubits with interactions mediated by 9 transmon-type tunable couplers. By developing efficient techniques to engineer the couplings between qubits via tuning couplers, we achieve both flat and curved spacetime backgrounds. The quantum walks of quasi-particle in the curved spacetime reflect the gravitational effect near the black hole, resulting in the behavior of Hawking radiation. By virtue of the state tomography measurement of all 7 qubits outside the analogue event horizon, we show that Hawking radiation can be verified. In addition, an entangled pair is prepared inside the horizon and the dynamics of entanglement in the curved spacetime is directly measured. Our results would stimulate more interests to explore the related features of black holes using the programmable superconducting processor with tunable couplers.

DOI
10.1038/s41467-023-39064-6

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Abstract Hawking radiation is one of the quantum features of a black hole that can be understood as a quantum tunneling across the event horizon of the black hole, but it is quite difficult to directly observe the Hawking radiation of an astrophysical black hole. Remarkable experiments of analogue black holes on various platforms have been performed. However, due to the experimental difficulty of accurately constructing curved spacetime and precisely measuring the thermal spectrum, Hawking radiation and its quantum nature, such as entanglement, have not been adequately investigated. Based on the recent architecture breakthrough of tunable couplers for superconducting processors, we experimentally realize an analogue black hole using our newly developed chip with a chain of 10 superconducting transmon qubits with interactions mediated by 9 transmon-type tunable couplers. By developing efficient techniques to engineer the couplings between qubits via tuning couplers, we achieve both flat and curved spacetime backgrounds. The quantum walks of quasi-particle in the curved spacetime reflect the gravitational effect near the black hole, resulting in the behavior of Hawking radiation. By virtue of the state tomography measurement of all 7 qubits outside the analogue event horizon, we show that Hawking radiation can be verified. In addition, an entangled pair is prepared inside the horizon and the dynamics of entanglement in the curved spacetime is directly measured. Our results would stimulate more interests to explore the related features of black holes using the programmable superconducting processor with tunable couplers.
Hawking radiation is a fundamental spontaneous phenomenon in which the event horizon of a black hole transforms the vacuum state into a pair of correlated particles: the Hawking radiation and its partner. This emission can also be stimulated by a state other than the vacuum. A similar phenomenon, known as analogue Hawking radiation, has been observed across various physical systems, but experimental realizations have largely remained in the classical regime. This work presents an experimental verification of analogue Hawking radiation stimulated by a single-particle state, producing a verifiably single-photon Hawking output. Using heralded single photons generated via spontaneous four-wave mixing, we stimulate the analogue Hawking effect in an optical fiber. We characterize the resulting Hawking signal by measuring its spectral dependence, intensity scaling, and heralded second-order correlation. Our results establish a platform for exploring quantum correlations and entanglement in analogue gravity. Researchers experimentally demonstrate analogue Hawking radiation stimulated by a single photon in an optical fiber. This work enables new studies of quantum effects in nonlinear optics and analogue gravity.
The complete evaporation of black holes, as a natural endpoint of Hawking radiation, gives rise to the black hole information paradox, which fundamentally challenges the principles of unitarity and information conservation in quantum mechanics. Although the AdS/CFT correspondence indicates that information is preserved during black hole evaporation, the precise mechanism by which it is recovered from the Hawking radiation remains an open question. To explore a potential resolution, we investigate information transfer in a spin-chain model featuring an effective horizon realized via position-dependent couplings within an XY spin chain. We derive and demonstrate Page curve-like behavior, and analyze the transmission of quantum resources, such as entanglement and coherence, across the effective horizon. Our results show that quantum resources initially localized within an interior subsystem can be transferred to the exterior via particle radiation through the horizon. This study provides a novel perspective from quantum simulation on how information may escape from black holes, thereby contributing to the further understanding of the black hole information paradox.
Hawking radiation is a fundamental result of quantum field theory in curved spacetime, yet its direct observation remains beyond current experimental capabilities. Circuit quantum electrodynamics provides a practical platform for realizing analogue systems where Hawking-like radiation may be studied under controlled laboratory conditions. In this work, we analyze two superconducting-circuit analogues of Schwarzschild black holes: a tunable dc-SQUID transmission line and a SNAIL-based transmission line supporting solitonic solutions of the KdV equation. We investigate the conditions under which these architectures can generate an observable Hawking temperature and study the impact of dissipation and thermal noise using an open quantum systems approach. To assess the observability of the Hawking signal, we propose complementing particle number measurements with estimates of the Hilbert-Schmidt distance to the thermal bath. Our analysis establishes practical detectability thresholds and shows that Hawking temperatures above approximately 73 mK remain distinguishable under realistic experimental conditions. While the tunable transmission line architecture can reach temperatures of about 113 mK and therefore appears more viable, the solitonic model requires further optimization and more demanding experimental conditions.
Abstract Hawking radiation, predicted in 1974, establishes a fundamental bridge between quantum mechanics, general relativity, and thermodynamics. Direct observation remains impossible for astrophysical black holes (T_H ~ 10⁻⁸ K), motivating the development of analog systems. We report the first large-scale kinematic analog of Hawking radiation on a superconducting quantum processor, utilizing IBM Quantum Heron (ibm_fez, 156 qubits) with four spin chains deployed across calibration-verified low-noise regions. Our Multi-Horizon Interleaved Layout (MHIL) architecture enables up to four simultaneous 'Hawking universes' with O(1) circuit depth independent of system size, requiring zero SWAP gates through native heavy-hex topology exploitation. We demonstrate: (i) spatial localization of entanglement flux at the analog horizon with ratio F_h/F_far = 83.2× under optimized error mitigation (44.3× under standard reproducible conditions) (threshold: 1.8×); (ii) monotonic temporal dynamics with R² = 0.999; (iii) multi-chain reproducibility across three independent horizons; (iv) rigorous statistical validation showing 91.6% signal degradation under shuffle control (p < 0.001, Cohen's d = 4.7), supporting a physical origin of the observed correlations. IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION: This work demonstrates KINEMATIC (not thermodynamic) analog Hawking radiation. We observe spatial localization and pair correlation signatures consistent with the kinematic aspects of Hawking's prediction. We do NOT measure a thermal Planck spectrum, do NOT extract a Hawking temperature T_H, and do NOT achieve Bell-CHSH violation (S ≈ 0.4 < 2.0). These limitations are explicitly acknowledged. Extensions include the first non-integrable regime simulation (98 qubits, disorder strength W = 0.65) and preliminary exploratory evidence of analog wormhole cross-throat flux (48 qubits, 5/5 seeds validated, p = 0.031—this preliminary result requires confirmation with larger sample size). These results establish the viability of kinematic analog Hawking simulations on NISQ superconducting processors accessible via cloud, opening quantum gravity phenomenology to the broader research community without specialized infrastructure.
The Hawking effect can be understood as a broad kinematic phenomenon associated with mode behavior near a horizon. While astrophysical black holes produce one specific realization of this radiation, this perspective inspires extensive theoretical and experimental efforts to create event horizons in diverse physical systems to observe the resulting analogue Hawking emission. One of the most successful realizations is the fiber-optical analogue, based on nonlinear quantum optics. In these notes, we introduce and motivate this system while outlining the theoretical concepts underlying the gravitational analogy. Finally, we review key experiments and discuss their impact on the field.
We investigate the emergence and detection of Hawking radiation (HR) in a 1D chiral spin chain model, where the gravitational collapse is simulated by a sudden quantum quench that triggers a horizon-inducing phase transition. While our previous work [33] established that this model mimics black hole (BH) formation conditions even when the Hoop conjecture is seemingly violated, we here focus on the resulting stationary radiation spectrum and its detectability. By mapping the spin chain dynamics to a Dirac fermion in a curved ( 1 + 1 ) -dimensional spacetime, we analyze the radiation using two complementary approaches: field-theoretic modes and operational quantum sensors. First, using localized Gaussian wave packets to model realistic detectors, we find that the radiation spectrum exhibits deviations from the ideal Planckian form, while retaining robust Poissonian statistics that signal the loss of formation-scale information. Second, we introduce a qubit coupled globally to the chiral spin chain. Rather than acting as a localized point detector (which would break translational invariance), the qubit couples to the collective chiral excitations of the analogue spacetime, functioning as a global quantum sensor. We demonstrate that the decoherence dynamics of this macroscopic probe faithfully encode the thermal nature of the HR in the weak-coupling limit, while strong-coupling dynamics reveal non-Markovian memory effects driven by the horizon. These results provide a clear operational protocol for distinguishing genuine analog HR from environmental noise in quantum simulation platforms.