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arXiv:2210.06489

Suppression of $1/f$ noise in quantum simulators of gauge theories

Bhavik Kumar, Philipp Hauke, Jad C. Halimeh

Published Oct 12, 2022• 0 citations
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Abstract

In the current drive to quantum-simulate evermore complex gauge-theory phenomena, it is necessary to devise schemes allowing for the control and suppression of unavoidable gauge-breaking errors on different experimental platforms. Although there have been several successful approaches to tackle coherent errors, comparatively little has been done in the way of decoherence. By numerically solving the corresponding Bloch--Redfield equations, we show that the recently developed method of \textit{linear gauge protection} suppresses the growth of gauge violations due to $1/f^β$ noise as $1/V^β$, where $V$ is the protection strength and $β>0$, in Abelian lattice gauge theories, as we show through exemplary results for $\mathrm{U}(1)$ quantum link models and $\mathbb{Z}_2$ lattice gauge theories. We support our numerical findings with analytic derivations through time-dependent perturbation theory. Our findings are of immediate applicability in modern analog quantum simulators and digital NISQ devices.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2210.06489

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In the current drive to quantum-simulate evermore complex gauge-theory phenomena, it is necessary to devise schemes allowing for the control and suppression of unavoidable gauge-breaking errors on different experimental platforms. Although there have been several successful approaches to tackle coherent errors, comparatively little has been done in the way of decoherence. By numerically solving the corresponding Bloch--Redfield equations, we show that the recently developed method of \textit{linear gauge protection} suppresses the growth of gauge violations due to 1/fβ1/f^β1/fβ noise as 1/Vβ1/V^β1/Vβ, where VVV is the protection strength and β>0β>0β>0, in Abelian lattice gauge theories, as we show through exemplary results for U(1)\mathrm{U}(1)U(1) quantum link models and Z2\mathbb{Z}_2Z2​ lattice gauge theories. We support our numerical findings with analytic derivations through time-dependent perturbation theory. Our findings are of immediate applicability in modern analog quantum simulators and digital NISQ devices.
Stabilizing Quantum Simulators Of Gauge Theories Against 1/f1/f1/f Noise
This work investigates the application of quantum simulation in the ongoing "second" quantum revolution, which employs various synthetic quantum matter platforms, such as ultracold atoms in optical lattices, Rydberg atoms, and superconducting qubits, to realize exotic condensed matter and particle physics phenomena with high precision and control. Gauge theories are of particular interest in modern quantum simulators as they offer a new probe of high-energy physics on low-energy tabletop devices. However, to accurately model gauge-theory phenomena on a quantum simulator, stabilizing the underlying gauge symmetry is crucial. Through this thesis we demonstrate that a recently developed experimentally feasible scheme based on linear gauge protection, initially devised to protect against coherent gauge breaking errors, can also be used to suppress incoherent errors arising from 1/fβ1/f^β1/fβ noise prominent in various quantum simulation platforms. The Bloch-Redfield formalism is introduced to model gauge violations arising due to these incoherent errors given the noise power spectrum of the environment. The efficacy of linear gauge protection in stabilizing salient features of gauge theories in quantum simulators, such as gauge invariance and exotic far from equilibrium phenomenon focusing on disorder-free localization, and quantum many-body scars against 1/fβ1/f^β1/fβ noise sources, is illustrated. These results are immediately applicable in modern analog quantum simulators and digital NISQ devices, paving the way for further development in the field of quantum simulation of lattice gauge theories.
Quantum-simulator hardware promises new insights into problems from particle and nuclear physics.A major challenge is to reproduce gauge invariance, as violations of this quintessential property of lattice gauge theories can have dramatic consequences, e.g., the generation of a photon mass in quantum electrodynamics.Here, we introduce an experimentally friendly method to protect gauge invariance in U(1) lattice gauge theories against coherent errors in a controllable way.Our method employs only single-body energy-penalty terms, thus enabling practical implementations.As we derive analytically, some sets of penalty coefficients render undesired gauge sectors inaccessible by unitary dynamics for exponentially long times.Further, for few-body error terms, we show numerically that this is achieved with resources exhibiting little dependence on system size.These findings constitute an exponential improvement over previously known results from energy-gap protection or perturbative treatments.In our method, the gaugeinvariant subspace is protected by an emergent global symmetry, meaning it can be immediately applied to other symmetries.In our numerical benchmarks for continuous-time and digital quantum simulations, gauge protection holds for all calculated evolution times (up to t > 10 10 /J for continuous time, with J the relevant energy scale).Crucially, our gauge-protection technique is simpler to realize than the associated ideal gauge theory, and can thus be readily implemented in current ultracold-atom analog simulators as well as digital noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices.
Abstract Protection of gauge invariance in experimental realizations of lattice gauge theories based on energy-penalty schemes has recently stimulated impressive efforts both theoretically and in setups of quantum synthetic matter. A major challenge is the reliability of such schemes in non-abelian gauge theories where local conservation laws do not commute. Here, we show through exact diagonalization (ED) that non-abelian gauge invariance can be reliably controlled using gauge-protection terms that energetically stabilize the target gauge sector in Hilbert space, suppressing gauge violations due to unitary gauge-breaking errors. We present analytic arguments that predict a volume-independent protection strength V, which when sufficiently large leads to the emergence of an adjusted gauge theory with the same local gauge symmetry up to least a timescale ∝ V / V 0 3 . Thereafter, a renormalized gauge theory dominates up to a timescale ∝exp(V/V 0)/V 0 with V 0 a volume-independent energy factor, similar to the case of faulty abelian gauge theories. Moreover, we show for certain experimentally relevant errors that single-body protection terms robustly suppress gauge violations up to all accessible evolution times in ED, and demonstrate that the adjusted gauge theory emerges in this case as well. These single-body protection terms can be readily implemented with fewer engineering requirements than the ideal gauge theory itself in current ultracold-atom setups and noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices.
Currently, there are intense experimental efforts to realize lattice gauge theories in quantum simulators. Except for specific models, however, practical quantum simulators can never be fine-tuned to perfect local gauge invariance. There is thus a strong need for a rigorous understanding of gauge-invariance violation and how to reliably protect against it. As we show through analytic and numerical evidence, in the presence of a gauge invariance-breaking term the gauge violation accumulates only perturbatively at short times before proliferating only at very long times. This proliferation can be suppressed up to infinite times by energetically penalizing processes that drive the dynamics away from the initial gauge-invariant sector. Our results provide a theoretical basis that highlights a surprising robustness of gauge-theory quantum simulators.
Simulations of field theories on noisy quantum computers must contend with errors introduced by that noise. For gauge theories, a large class of errors violate gauge symmetry, and thus may result in unphysical processes occurring in the simulation. We present a method, applicable to non-Abelian gauge theories, for suppressing coherent gauge drift errors through the repeated application of pseudorandom gauge transformation. In cases where the dominant errors are gauge-violating, we expect this method to be a practical way to improve the accuracy of NISQ-era simulations.
A major test of the capabilities of modern quantum simulators and NISQ devices is the reliable realization of gauge theories, which constitute a gold standard of implementational efficacy. In addition to unavoidable unitary errors, realistic experiments suffer from decoherence, which compromises gauge invariance and, therefore, the gauge theory itself. Here, we study the effect of decoherence on the quench dynamics of a lattice gauge theory. Rigorously identifying the gauge violation as a divergence measure in the gauge sectors, we find at short times that it first grows diffusively ∼γt\simγt∼γt due to decoherence at environment-coupling strength γγγ, before unitary errors at strength λλλ dominate and the violation grows ballistically ∼λ2t2\simλ^2t^2∼λ2t2. We further introduce multiple quantum coherences in the context of gauge theories to quantify decoherence effects. Both experimentally accessible measures will be of independent interest beyond the immediate context of this work.