In the curved spacetime of a black hole, quantum physics gives rise to distinctive effects such as Hawking radiation and maximally fast scrambling. Here, we present a scheme for an analogue quantum simulation of (1 + 1) and (2 + 1)-dimensional black holes using ultracold atoms in a locally Floquet-driven optical lattice. We show how the effective dynamics of the driven system can generate position-dependent tunnelling amplitudes that encode the curved geometry of the black hole. Moreover, we provide a simple and robust scheme to determine the Hawking temperature of a (1+1)D simulated black hole based solely on on-site atom population measurements. Combined with the highly tunable onsite atom-atom interactions typical for cold atoms, our simulator provides a powerful and feasible platform to probe the scrambling of quantum information in black holes. We illustrate the ergodicity of our (2+1)D black-hole simulator by showing numerically that its level statistics in the hard-core limit approaches the ergodic regime faster than a globally homogeneous Hamiltonian.
In the curved spacetime of a black hole, quantum physics gives rise to distinctive effects such as Hawking radiation and maximally fast scrambling. Here, we present a scheme for an analogue quantum simulation of (1 + 1) and (2 + 1)-dimensional black holes using ultracold atoms in a locally Floquet-driven optical lattice. We show how the effective dynamics of the driven system can generate position-dependent tunnelling amplitudes that encode the curved geometry of the black hole. Moreover, we provide a simple and robust scheme to determine the Hawking temperature of a (1+1)D simulated black hole based solely on on-site atom population measurements. Combined with the highly tunable onsite atom-atom interactions typical for cold atoms, our simulator provides a powerful and feasible platform to probe the scrambling of quantum information in black holes. We illustrate the ergodicity of our (2+1)D black-hole simulator by showing numerically that its level statistics in the hard-core limit approaches the ergodic regime faster than a globally homogeneous Hamiltonian.
Numerical simulation is typically used to study the dynamics of complex quantum systems, namely 1-dimensional many-body spin systems and 2-dimensional spin lattice models. Systems of this nature tend to have large or complicated to experimentally realise Hilbert spaces. This results in a difficulty in producing realistic experimental methods of creating interacting spin systems and non-abelian topological phenomena. It also gives a limited success in numerical simulation, requiring advanced methods of quantum simulation to achieve results on an interesting scale. In this thesis we verify known theoretical properties and uncover new features of two such models: a many-body XX Hamiltonian modified with an interacting chiral term and a quantum double model utilised in the manipulation of topological particles. The interacting chiral spin chain has previously shown a rich variety of properties, from the semi-classical black hole background found in its continuum limit, to measurements of Hawking radiation and maximal information scrambling abilities. Our work builds upon these findings. First by analysing the phase order transition from the dominance of the chiral coupling and identifying the role interactions play in the chiral phase that define the interior of a black hole. The interactions of this model are then broken down with the Trotter-Suzuki method into a set of local evolutionary ’gates’. This quantum circuit decomposition of the chiral many-body dynamics gives rise to a potential method of experimental realisation, both of black hole geometry and of its maximal scrambling. Then a lattice model capable of manipulating topological particles is introduced. With this model we produce a methodology of extracting the braiding statistics of a simple non-abelian set of topological quasiparticles based on the S3 group with minimal resources. Within the limitations of this model, we manage to produce the result that the braiding operator this particle set has the ability to produce quantum magic states. This indicates a capability to perform universal quantum computation that can be demonstrated in the laboratory with current technology.
We implement a chiral spin-chain black hole simulator on IBM superconducting quantum hardware and probe, within a common microscopic framework, both semiclassical horizon physics and interacting quantum scrambling. We first measure the dispersion relation across the exterior, horizon and over-tilted interior regimes, reproducing the predicted evolution of the effective light-cone structure. To probe Hawking thermality, we prepare a localised excitation inside the horizon and monitor its density response at an exterior site, observing the predicted inverse relation between the peak arrival time and the surface gravity, thereby establishing a calibrated dynamical estimator of the Hawking temperature. Beyond the semiclassical regime, we continuously tune the interactions and distinguish non-exponential operator spreading in the free-fermion limit from Lyapunov-like OTOC decay in the strongly interacting chiral regime. These measurements use observable-specific Floquet circuits derived from the same parent chiral model, including its mean-field and coordinate-equivalent XY descriptions, to reduce circuit depth while preserving the physics relevant to each probe. Our results provide a unified programmable platform for studying horizon geometry, Hawking thermality and interacting scrambling on quantum hardware.
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.
We construct two free fermion lattice models exhibiting Hawking pair creation. Specifically, we consider the simplest case of a d=1+1 massless Dirac fermion, for which the Hawking effect can be understood in terms of a quench of the uniform vacuum state with a nonuniform Hamiltonian that interfaces modes with opposite chirality. For both our models, we find that additional modes arising from the lattice discretization play a crucial role, as they provide the bulk reservoir for the Hawking radiation: the Hawking pairs emerge from fermions deep inside the Fermi sea scattering off the effective black hole horizon. Our first model combines local hopping dynamics with a translation over one lattice site, and we find the resulting Floquet dynamics to realize a causal horizon, with fermions scattering from the region outside the horizon. For our second model, which relies on a purely local hopping Hamiltonian, we find the fermions to scatter from the inside. In both cases, for Hawking temperatures up to the inverse lattice spacing, we numerically find the resulting Hawking spectrum to be in perfect agreement with the Fermi-Dirac quantum field theory prediction.
Analogue gravity explores how collective excitations in condensed matter systems can reproduce the behavior of fields in curved spacetimes. An important example is the acoustic black holes that can occur for sound in a moving fluid. In these lecture notes, we focus on atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), quantum fluids that provide an interesting platform for analogue gravity studies thanks to their accurate theoretical description, remarkable experimental control, and ultralow temperatures that allow the quantum nature of sound to emerge. We give a pedagogical introduction to analogue black holes and the theoretical description of BECs and their elementary excitations, which behave as quantum fields in curved spacetimes. We then apply these tools to survey the current understanding of black-hole superradiance and analogue Hawking radiation, including explicit examples and numerical methods.
We propose a low energy model for simulating an analog black hole on an optical lattice using ultracold atoms. Assuming the validity of the holographic principle, we employ the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, which describes a system of randomly infinite range interacting fermions, also conjectured to be an exactly solvable UV-complete model for an extremal black hole in a higher dimensional Anti-de Sitter (AdS) dilaton gravity. At low energies, the SYK model exhibits an emergent conformal symmetry and is dual to the extremal black hole solution in near AdS2 spacetime. Furthermore, we show how the SYK maximally chaotic behaviour at large N limit, found to be dual to a gauge theory in higher dimensions, can also be employed as a non-trivial investigation tool for the holographic principle. The proposed setup is a theoretical platform to realize the SYK model with relevant exotic effects and behaviour at low energies as a highly non-trivial example of the AdS/CFT duality and a framework for studying black holes.