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arXiv:2406.14718

Stirring the false vacuum via interacting quantized bubbles on a 5564-qubit quantum annealer

Jaka Vodeb, Jean-Yves Desaules, Andrew Hallam, Andrea Rava, Gregor Humar, Dennis Willsch, Fengping Jin, Madita Willsch, Kristel F. L. Michielsen, Zlatko Papić

Published Jun 20, 2024• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

False vacuum decay is a potential mechanism governing the evolution of the early Universe, with profound connections to non-equilibrium quantum physics, including quenched dynamics, the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, and dynamical metastability. The non-perturbative character of the false vacuum decay and the scarcity of its experimental probes make the effect notoriously difficult to study, with many basic open questions, such as how the bubbles of true vacuum form, move and interact with each other. Here we utilize a quantum annealer with 5564 superconducting flux qubits to directly observe quantized bubble formation in real time -- the hallmark of false vacuum decay dynamics. Moreover, we develop an effective model that describes the initial bubble creation and subsequent interaction effects. We demonstrate that the effective model remains accurate in the presence of dissipation, showing that our annealer can access coherent scaling laws in driven many-body dynamics of 5564 qubits for over $1μ$s, i.e., more than 1000 intrinsic qubit time units. This work sets the stage for exploring late-time dynamics of the false vacuum at computationally intractable system sizes, dimensionality, and topology in quantum annealer platforms.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2406.14718

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False vacuum decay is a potential mechanism governing the evolution of the early Universe, with profound connections to non-equilibrium quantum physics, including quenched dynamics, the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, and dynamical metastability. The non-perturbative character of the false vacuum decay and the scarcity of its experimental probes make the effect notoriously difficult to study, with many basic open questions, such as how the bubbles of true vacuum form, move and interact with each other. Here we utilize a quantum annealer with 5564 superconducting flux qubits to directly observe quantized bubble formation in real time -- the hallmark of false vacuum decay dynamics. Moreover, we develop an effective model that describes the initial bubble creation and subsequent interaction effects. We demonstrate that the effective model remains accurate in the presence of dissipation, showing that our annealer can access coherent scaling laws in driven many-body dynamics of 5564 qubits for over 1μ1μ1μs, i.e., more than 1000 intrinsic qubit time units. This work sets the stage for exploring late-time dynamics of the false vacuum at computationally intractable system sizes, dimensionality, and topology in quantum annealer platforms.
False vacuum decay-the transition from a metastable quantum state to a true vacuum state-plays an important role in quantum field theory and non-equilibrium phenomena such as phase transitions and dynamical metastability. The non-perturbative nature of false vacuum decay and the limited experimental access to this process make it challenging to study, leaving several open questions regarding how true vacuum bubbles form, move and interact. Here we observe quantized bubble formation in real time, a key feature of false vacuum decay dynamics, using a quantum annealer with 5,564 superconducting flux qubits. We develop an effective model that captures both initial bubble creation and subsequent interactions, and remains accurate under dissipation. The annealer reveals coherent scaling laws in the driven many-body dynamics for more than 1,000 intrinsic qubit time units. This work provides a method for investigating false vacuum dynamics of large quantum systems in quantum annealers.
From cosmology to quantum matter, metastable states often decay through the nucleation and growth of competing domains, with false vacuum decay providing the paradigmatic example of this process. Here we demonstrate a distinct regime in which domain growth outpaces nucleation by orders of magnitude and is controlled by local resonance conditions. Using a programmable quantum annealer with more than 4000 qubits, we realize a two-dimensional quantum Ising model whose metastable spin-polarized state encodes a false vacuum. At a specific value of the longitudinal field, single-spin flips at the boundary of a seeded bubble become resonant, enabling kinetically constrained expansion. Combining experiment with tensor-network simulations and stochastic circuit modeling, we observe nearly ballistic growth of true-vacuum domains with sub-ballistic interface broadening, consistent with Kardar--Parisi--Zhang universality. Our results establish a growth-dominated regime of false vacuum decay and show how large-scale quantum simulation can access nonequilibrium metastable dynamics relevant to quantum field theory, cosmology, and strongly correlated matter.
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False vacuum decay, which is understood to happen through bubble nucleation, is a prominent phenomenon relevant to elementary particle physics and early-universe cosmology. Understanding its microscopic dynamics in higher spatial dimensions is currently a major challenge and research thrust. Recent advances in numerical techniques allow for the extraction of related signatures in tractable systems in two spatial dimensions over intermediate timescales. Here, we focus on the 2+12+12+1D quantum Ising model, where a longitudinal field is used to energetically separate the two Z2\mathbb{Z}_2Z2​ symmetry-broken ferromagnetic ground states, turning them into a ``true'' and ``false'' vacuum. Using tree tensor networks, we simulate the microscopic dynamics of a spin-down domain in a spin-up background after a homogeneous quench, with parameters chosen so that the domain corresponds to a bubble of the true vacuum in a false-vacuum background. Our study identifies how the ultimate fate of the bubble -- indefinite expansion or collapse -- depends on its geometrical features and on the microscopic parameters of the Ising Hamiltonian. We further provide a realistic quantum-simulation scheme, aimed at probing bubble dynamics on atomic Rydberg arrays.
The confinement of elementary particles and the decay of the false vacuum are two paradigmatic predictions of quantum field theory. In their simplest formulation, the two phenomena can be understood as two facets of an underlying symmetry-breaking mechanism: the degeneracy of a double-degenerate vacuum is lifted by adding an explicit symmetry-breaking external field. Confined states are false vacuum bubbles within a true vacuum (the true ground state of the model); likewise, false vacuum decay refers to the dissolution of the metastable vacuum through true vacuum bubbles nucleation via quantum tunneling. The interest in this area of research has been recently revamped by the advances in experimental techniques (e.g. trapped ions, ultracold atoms, Rydberg atoms): confinement has already proved to be accessible in condensed matter laboratory experiments while the direct laboratory study of the false vacuum decay is promisingly within reach. Moreover, in the past few decades the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of quantum many-body systems was promoted to the forefront of research in condensed matter physics. I will present relevant investigations of such phenomena in the context of quantum spin chain models through the observation of their real-time dynamics following a quantum quench (the paradigmatic theoretical and experimental protocol for non-equilibrium dynamics).