Machine learning discovery of new phases in programmable quantum simulator snapshots
Cole Miles, Rhine Samajdar, Sepehr Ebadi, Tout T. Wang, Hannes Pichler, Subir Sachdev A, Mikhail D. Lukin, Markus Greiner, Kilian Q. Weinberger, Eun-Ah Kim
Machine learning has recently emerged as a promising approach for studying complex phenomena characterized by rich datasets. In particular, data-centric approaches lead to the possibility of automatically discovering structures in experimental datasets that manual inspection may miss. Here, we introduce an interpretable unsupervised-supervised hybrid machine learning approach, the hybrid-correlation convolutional neural network (hybrid-CCNN), and apply it to experimental data generated using a programmable quantum simulator based on Rydberg atom arrays. Specifically, we apply hybrid-CCNN to discover and identify new quantum phases on square lattices with programmable interactions. The initial unsupervised dimensionality reduction and clustering stage first reveals five distinct quantum phase regions. In a second supervised stage, we refine these phase boundaries and seek insights into the phases by training multiple CCNN classifiers. A learned spatial weighting, introduced to the CCNNs in this work, enables discovery of spatial structure at scales beyond the filter size. The characteristic spatial weightings and snippets of correlations specifically recognized in each phase capture quantum fluctuations in the striated phase and identify a previously undetected boundary-ordered phase as well as motifs of more exotic ordered phases. These observations demonstrate that a combination of programmable quantum simulators with machine learning can be used as a powerful tool for detailed exploration of correlated quantum states of matter.
Machine learning has recently emerged as a promising approach for studying complex phenomena characterized by rich datasets. In particular, data-centric approaches lead to the possibility of automatically discovering structures in experimental datasets that manual inspection may miss. Here, we introduce an interpretable unsupervised-supervised hybrid machine learning approach, the hybrid-correlation convolutional neural network (hybrid-CCNN), and apply it to experimental data generated using a programmable quantum simulator based on Rydberg atom arrays. Specifically, we apply hybrid-CCNN to discover and identify new quantum phases on square lattices with programmable interactions. The initial unsupervised dimensionality reduction and clustering stage first reveals five distinct quantum phase regions. In a second supervised stage, we refine these phase boundaries and seek insights into the phases by training multiple CCNN classifiers. A learned spatial weighting, introduced to the CCNNs in this work, enables discovery of spatial structure at scales beyond the filter size. The characteristic spatial weightings and snippets of correlations specifically recognized in each phase capture quantum fluctuations in the striated phase and identify a previously undetected boundary-ordered phase as well as motifs of more exotic ordered phases. These observations demonstrate that a combination of programmable quantum simulators with machine learning can be used as a powerful tool for detailed exploration of correlated quantum states of matter.
Interpretable machine learning techniques are becoming essential tools for extracting physical insights from complex quantum data. We build on recent advances in variational autoencoders to demonstrate that such models can learn physically meaningful and interpretable representations from a broad class of unlabeled quantum datasets. From raw measurement data alone, the learned representation reveals rich information about the underlying structure of quantum phase diagrams. We further augment the learning pipeline with symbolic methods, enabling the discovery of compact analytical descriptors that serve as order parameters for the distinct regimes emerging in the learned representations. We demonstrate the framework on experimental Rydberg-atom snapshots, classical shadows of the cluster Ising model, and hybrid discrete-continuous fermionic data, revealing previously unreported phenomena such as a corner-ordering pattern in the Rydberg arrays. These results establish a general framework, which constitutes an important step toward the autonomous discovery of physical descriptors from diverse quantum datasets. All methods are available through qdisc, an open-source Python library designed to make these tools accessible to the broader community.
Programmable quantum simulators based on Rydberg atom arrays provide a versatile platform for data-driven quantum simulation of strongly correlated systems, combinatorial optimization problems, and artificial quantum materials. In this review, we present a unified perspective on how materials-inspired effective Hamiltonians can be engineered and probed in Rydberg arrays, highlighting representative phenomena such as quantum phase transitions, frustrated spin-liquid-like states, symmetry-protected topological phases, and nonequilibrium dynamics. We further discuss recent progress in machine learning-based approaches, including phase identification from experimental snapshots, neural network quantum states, Hamiltonian learning, and quantum reservoir computing. A central theme is the emergence of closed-loop classical-quantum hybrid workflows, in which quantum simulation, measurement, and classical inference are integrated through iterative feedback. These developments position Rydberg atom arrays not only as programmable simulators but also as data-driven platforms for the scalable exploration, characterization, and design of complex quantum materials.
Programmable quantum simulators based on Rydberg atom arrays are a fast-emerging quantum platform, bringing together long coherence times, high-fidelity operations, and large numbers of interacting qubits deterministically arranged in flexible geometries. Today's Rydberg array devices are demonstrating their utility as quantum simulators for studying phases and phase transitions in quantum matter. In this paper, we show that unprocessed and imperfect experimental projective measurement data can be used to enhance in silico simulations of quantum matter, by improving the performance of variational Monte Carlo simulations. As an example, we focus on data spanning the disordered-to-checkerboard transition in a $16\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}16$ square-lattice array [S. Ebadi et al., Nature (London) 595, 227 (2021)] and employ the data-enhanced variational Monte Carlo algorithm to train powerful autoregressive wave-function ans\"atze based on recurrent neural networks (RNNs). We observe universal improvements in the convergence times of our simulations with this hybrid training scheme. Notably, we also find that pretraining with experimental data enables relatively simple RNN ans\"atze to accurately capture phases of matter that are not learned with a purely variational training approach. Our work highlights the promise of hybrid quantum-classical approaches for large-scale simulation of quantum many-body systems, combining autoregressive language models with experimental data from existing quantum devices.
Image-like data from quantum systems promises to offer greater insight into the physics of correlated quantum matter. However, the traditional framework of condensed matter physics lacks principled approaches for analyzing such data. Machine learning models are a powerful theoretical tool for analyzing image-like data including many-body snapshots from quantum simulators. Recently, they have successfully distinguished between simulated snapshots that are indistinguishable from one and two point correlation functions. Thus far, the complexity of these models has inhibited new physical insights from such approaches. Here, we develop a set of nonlinearities for use in a neural network architecture that discovers features in the data which are directly interpretable in terms of physical observables. Applied to simulated snapshots produced by two candidate theories approximating the doped Fermi-Hubbard model, we uncover that the key distinguishing features are fourth-order spin-charge correlators. Our approach lends itself well to the construction of simple, versatile, end-to-end interpretable architectures, thus paving the way for new physical insights from machine learning studies of experimental and numerical data.
The application of state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to statistical physic problems has seen a surge of interest for their ability to discriminate phases of matter by extracting essential features in the many-body wavefunction or the ensemble of correlators sampled in Monte Carlo simulations. Here we introduce a gener- alization of supervised machine learning approaches that allows to accurately map out phase diagrams of inter- acting many-body systems without any prior knowledge, e.g. of their general topology or the number of distinct phases. To substantiate the versatility of this approach, which combines convolutional neural networks with quantum Monte Carlo sampling, we map out the phase diagrams of interacting boson and fermion models both at zero and finite temperatures and show that first-order, second-order, and Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transitions can all be identified. We explicitly demonstrate that our approach is capable of identifying the phase transition to non-trivial many-body phases such as superfluids or topologically ordered phases without supervision.
Experimental progress in qubit manufacturing calls for the development of new theoretical tools to analyze quantum data. We show how an unsupervised machine-learning technique can be used to understand short-range entangled many-qubit systems using data of local measurements. The method successfully constructs the phase diagram of a cluster-state model and detects the respective order parameters of its phases, including string order parameters. For the toric code subject to external magnetic fields, the machine identifies the explicit forms of its two stabilizers. Prior information of the underlying Hamiltonian or the quantum states is not needed; instead, the machine outputs their characteristic observables. Our work opens the door for a first-principles application of hybrid algorithms that aim at strong interpretability without supervision.