In quantum many-body systems, characterizing topological phase transitions typically requires complex many-body topological invariants, which are costly to compute and measure. Inspired by quantum reservoir computing, we propose an unsupervised quantum phase detection method based on a many-body localized evolution, enabling efficient identification of phase transitions in the extended SSH model. The evolved quantum states produce feature distributions under local measurements, which, after simple post-processing and dimensionality reduction, naturally cluster according to different Hamiltonian parameters. Numerical simulations show that the evolution combined with local measurements can significantly amplify distinctions between quantum states, providing an efficient means to detect topological phase transitions. Our approach requires neither complex measurements nor full density matrix reconstruction, making it practical and feasible for noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices.
In quantum many-body systems, characterizing topological phase transitions typically requires complex many-body topological invariants, which are costly to compute and measure. Inspired by quantum reservoir computing, we propose an unsupervised quantum phase detection method based on a many-body localized evolution, enabling efficient identification of phase transitions in the extended SSH model. The evolved quantum states produce feature distributions under local measurements, which, after simple post-processing and dimensionality reduction, naturally cluster according to different Hamiltonian parameters. Numerical simulations show that the evolution combined with local measurements can significantly amplify distinctions between quantum states, providing an efficient means to detect topological phase transitions. Our approach requires neither complex measurements nor full density matrix reconstruction, making it practical and feasible for noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices.
The discovery of topological features of quantum states plays a central role in modern condensed matter physics and various artificial systems. Due to the absence of local order parameters, the detection of topological phase transitions remains a challenge. Machine learning may provide effective methods for identifying topological features. In this work, we show that manifold learning can successfully retrieve topological quantum phase transitions in momentum space. Our results show that the Chebyshev distance (CD) between two data points can successfully capture the main features of topological phase transitions, while the widely used Euclidean distance in general fails. The similarity matrix built upon the CD thus naturally exhibits uncorrelated cluster structures, corresponding to distinct sectors in the topological phase diagram. Then a diffusion map is applied to implement dimensionality reduction and to learn about topological quantum phase transitions in an unsupervised manner. Our demonstrations on the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model, the 2D Qi-Wu-Zhang (QWZ) model, and the quenched SSH model show the capability of generic unsupervised learning, when equipped with a suitable distance metric, in exploring topological quantum phase transitions.
The discovery of topological features of quantum states plays an important role in modern condensed matter physics and various artificial systems. Due to the absence of local order parameters, the detection of topological quantum phase transitions remains a challenge. Machine learning may provide effective methods for identifying topological features. In this work we show that the unsupervised manifold learning can successfully retrieve topological quantum phase transitions in momentum and real space. Our results show that the Chebyshev distance between two data points sharpens the characteristic features of topological quantum phase transitions in momentum space, while the widely used Euclidean distance is in general suboptimal. Then a diffusion map or isometric map can be applied to implement the dimensionality reduction, and to learn about topological quantum phase transitions in an unsupervised manner. We demonstrate this method on the prototypical Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model, the Qi-Wu-Zhang (QWZ) model, and the quenched SSH model in momentum space, and further provide implications and demonstrations for learning in real space, where the topological invariants could be unknown or hard to compute. The interpretable good performance of our approach shows the capability of manifold learning, when equipped with a suitable distance metric, in exploring topological quantum phase transitions.
Experimental quantum simulators have become large and complex enough that discovering new physics from the huge amount of measurement data can be quite challenging, especially when little theoretical understanding of the simulated model is available. Unsupervised machine learning methods are particularly promising in overcoming this challenge. For the specific task of learning quantum phase transitions, unsupervised machine learning methods have primarily been developed for phase transitions characterized by simple order parameters, typically linear in the measured observables. However, such methods often fail for more complicated phase transitions, such as those involving incommensurate phases, valence-bond solids, topological order, and many-body localization. We show that the diffusion map method, which performs nonlinear dimensionality reduction and spectral clustering of the measurement data, has significant potential for learning such complex phase transitions unsupervised. This method may work for measurements of local observables in a single basis and is thus readily applicable to many experimental quantum simulators as a versatile tool for learning various quantum phases and phase transitions.
Abstract Identifying phase transitions is one of the key challenges in quantum many-body physics. Recently, machine learning methods have been shown to be an alternative way of localising phase boundaries from noisy and imperfect data without the knowledge of the order parameter. Here, we apply different unsupervised machine learning techniques, including anomaly detection and influence functions, to experimental data from ultracold atoms. In this way, we obtain the topological phase diagram of the Haldane model in a completely unbiased fashion. We show that these methods can successfully be applied to experimental data at finite temperatures and to the data of Floquet systems when post-processing the data to a single micromotion phase. Our work provides a benchmark for the unsupervised detection of new exotic phases in complex many-body systems.
In this work, we proposed a novel approach for identifying quantum phase transitions in one-dimensional quantum many-body systems using AutoEncoder (AE), an unsupervised machine learning technique, with minimal prior knowledge. The training of the AEs is done with reduced density matrix (RDM) data obtained by Exact Diagonalization (ED) across the entire range of the driving parameter and thus no prior knowledge of the phase diagram is required. With this method, we successfully detect the phase transitions in a wide range of models with multiple phase transitions of different types, including the topological and the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transitions by tracking the changes in the reconstruction loss of the AE. The learned representation of the AE is used to characterize the physical phenomena underlying different quantum phases. Our methodology demonstrates a new approach to studying quantum phase transitions with minimal knowledge, small amount of needed data, and produces compressed representations of the quantum states.
Quantum many-body (QMB) systems are generally computationally hard: the computing resources necessary to simulate them exactly can often exceed the existing computation resources by orders of magnitude. For this reason, Richard Feynman proposed the concept of a quantum simulator: quantum systems engineered to obey a prescribed evolution equation and repeating the experiment multiple times. Experimentally, however, as we explain below, the vast majority of observables describing the system are inaccessible. Thus, while Feynman's idea addresses the problem of simulating quantum dynamics, it leaves unsolved the equally fundamental problem of inferring the underlying physics from the limited observables accessible in experiments. Indeed, many complex phenomena associated with QMB systems remain elusive. Perhaps, the most important example is identifying phase transitions in QMB systems when no simple order-parameter exists, which poses major challenges to this day. Complicating the problem further is the fact that, in most cases, it is impossible to learn from numerical simulations, as the underlying systems are often too large to be computable, and small QMB can show strong finite size effects, masking the presence of the transition. Here, we present an unsupervised machine learning approach to study QMB experiments, specifically aimed at detecting phase transitions and crossovers directly from raw experimental measurements. We demonstrate our methodology on systems undergoing Many-Body Localization cross-over and Mott-to-Superfluid phase-transition, showing that it reveals collective phenomena from the very partial experimental data and without any model-specific prior knowledge of the system. This approach offers a general and scalable route for data-driven discovery of emergent phenomena in complex quantum many-body systems.