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arXiv:2301.03522

The Neverending Story of the Eternal Wormhole and the Noisy Sycamore

Galina Weinstein

Published Jan 9, 2023• 0 citations

Abstract

There has been a great buzz surrounding Daniel Jafferis et al.'s latest Nature paper, "Traversable wormhole dynamics on a quantum processor". The Nature paper discusses an experiment in which Google's Sycamore quantum processor is used to simulate a sparse N = 7 SYK model with 5 terms (a learned Hamiltonian). The Nature paper shows that the learned Hamiltonian preserves the key gravitational characteristics of an N = 10 SYK model with 210 terms and is sufficient to produce a traversable wormhole behavior. I will examine the experiment and discuss some philosophical challenges concerning the experiment in memory of Ian Hacking. Recently, Norman Yao and two graduate students discovered multiple flaws in Jafferis et al.'s learned Hamiltonian and uploaded a comment on the Nature paper. As expected, Jafferis and his team found a simple way to clarify the misunderstanding. They found a physical justification that allowed them to avoid the problem. In this paper, I elucidate the main arguments Yao and his students raised and the way Jafferis et al. found to save their learned Hamiltonian. I will end this paper with a philosophical comment on this recent development in the context of the learned Hamiltonian.

DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2301.03522

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There has been a great buzz surrounding Daniel Jafferis et al.'s latest Nature paper, "Traversable wormhole dynamics on a quantum processor". The Nature paper discusses an experiment in which Google's Sycamore quantum processor is used to simulate a sparse N = 7 SYK model with 5 terms (a learned Hamiltonian). The Nature paper shows that the learned Hamiltonian preserves the key gravitational characteristics of an N = 10 SYK model with 210 terms and is sufficient to produce a traversable wormhole behavior. I will examine the experiment and discuss some philosophical challenges concerning the experiment in memory of Ian Hacking. Recently, Norman Yao and two graduate students discovered multiple flaws in Jafferis et al.'s learned Hamiltonian and uploaded a comment on the Nature paper. As expected, Jafferis and his team found a simple way to clarify the misunderstanding. They found a physical justification that allowed them to avoid the problem. In this paper, I elucidate the main arguments Yao and his students raised and the way Jafferis et al. found to save their learned Hamiltonian. I will end this paper with a philosophical comment on this recent development in the context of the learned Hamiltonian.

The paper discusses Daniel Jafferis et al.'s "Nature" publication on "Traversable wormhole dynamics on a quantum processor." The experiment utilized Google's Sycamore quantum processor to simulate a sparse SYK model with a learned Hamiltonian. A debate ensued when Bryce Kobrin, Thomas Schuster, and Norman Yao raised concerns about the learned Hamiltonian's reliability, which Jafferis and the team addressed. Recently, there has been an update in the wormhole experiment saga. In an attempt to rescue the commuting Hamiltonian from its inevitable fate of being invalidated, a recent paper by Ping Gao proposed a creative solution to reinvigorate the concept within the context of teleportation through wormholes. This paper delves into the ongoing debate and the recent endeavor to address the comments made by Kobrin et al. I remain skeptical about the efforts to address Kobrin et al.'s challenges. By its nature, a commuting Hamiltonian does not exhibit chaotic behavior like non-commuting Hamiltonians. Moreover, it's always essential to assess the sensitivity of the Hamiltonian to noise to understand its practical feasibility for the real-world Sycamore processor.

A recent article [Nature 612, 51-55 (2022)] claims to observe traversable wormhole dynamics in an experiment. This claim is based upon performing a teleportation protocol using a Hamiltonian that consists of seven Majorana fermions with five fully-commuting terms. The Hamiltonian is generated via a machine-learning procedure designed to replicate the teleportation behavior of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. The authors claim that the learned Hamiltonian reproduces gravitational dynamics of the SYK model and demonstrates gravitational teleportation through an emergent wormhole. We find: (i) in contrast to these claims, the learned Hamiltonian does not exhibit thermalization; (ii) the teleportation signal only resembles the SYK model for operators that were used in the machine-learning training; (iii) the observed perfect size winding is in fact a generic feature of small-size, fully-commuting models, and does not appear to persist in larger-size fully-commuting models or in non-commuting models at equivalent system sizes

This paper serves as an addendum to my previously published work, which delves into the experimentation with the Google Sycamore quantum processor under the title "Debating the Reliability and Robustness of the Learned Hamiltonian in the Traversable Wormhole Experiment." In the preceding publication, I extensively discussed the quantum system functioning as a dual to a traversable wormhole and the ongoing efforts to discover a sparse model that accurately depicts the dynamics of this intriguing phenomenon. In this paper, I bring to light an important insight regarding applying Nancy Cartwright's ideas about reliability and reproducibility, which are deeply rooted in classical scientific practices and experiments. I show that when applied to the realm of quantum devices, such as Google's Sycamore quantum processor and other Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices, these well-established notions demand careful adaptation and consideration. These systems' inherent noise and quantum nature introduce complexities that necessitate rethinking traditional perspectives on reliability and reproducibility. In light of these complexities, I propose the term "noisy reliability" as a means to effectively capture the nuanced nature of assessing the reliability of quantum devices, particularly in the presence of inherent quantum noise. This addendum seeks to enrich the discussion by highlighting the challenges and implications of assessing quantum device reliability, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of quantum experimentation and its potential applications in various domains.