Probing emergent prethermal dynamics and resonant melting on a programmable quantum simulator
Siva Darbha, Alexey Khudorozhkov, Pedro L. S. Lopes, Fangli Liu, Ermal Rrapaj, J. T. Balewski, Majd Hamdan, Pavel E. Dolgirev, Alexander Schuckert, Katherine Klymko, Sheng-Tao Wang, Mikhail D. Lukin, Daan Camps, Milan Kornjača
The dynamics of isolated quantum systems following a sudden quench plays a central role in many areas of material science, high-energy physics, and quantum chemistry. Featuring complex phenomena with implications for thermalization, non-equilibrium phase transitions, and Floquet phase engineering, such far-from-equilibrium quantum dynamics is challenging to study numerically, in particular, in high-dimensional systems. Here, we use a programmable neutral atom quantum simulator to systematically explore quench dynamics in spin models with up to 180 qubits. By initializing the system in a product state and performing quenches across a broad parameter space, we discover several stable, qualitatively distinct dynamical regimes. We trace their robustness to Floquet-like prethermal steady states that are stabilized over long emergent timescales by strong dynamical constraints. In addition, we observe sharp peaks in the dynamical response that are quantitatively explained by the structured melting of prethermalization through resonances. In two dimensions, we uncover a sharp dynamical response change that converges with increased system size, that is linked to the proliferation of Néel-order defects and indicative of a dynamical phase transition with no equilibrium analogs. Uncovering an intricate interplay between quantum prethermalization and emergent dynamical phases, our results demonstrate the use of quantum simulators for revealing complex non-equilibrium quantum many-body phenomena.
The dynamics of isolated quantum systems following a sudden quench plays a central role in many areas of material science, high-energy physics, and quantum chemistry. Featuring complex phenomena with implications for thermalization, non-equilibrium phase transitions, and Floquet phase engineering, such far-from-equilibrium quantum dynamics is challenging to study numerically, in particular, in high-dimensional systems. Here, we use a programmable neutral atom quantum simulator to systematically explore quench dynamics in spin models with up to 180 qubits. By initializing the system in a product state and performing quenches across a broad parameter space, we discover several stable, qualitatively distinct dynamical regimes. We trace their robustness to Floquet-like prethermal steady states that are stabilized over long emergent timescales by strong dynamical constraints. In addition, we observe sharp peaks in the dynamical response that are quantitatively explained by the structured melting of prethermalization through resonances. In two dimensions, we uncover a sharp dynamical response change that converges with increased system size, that is linked to the proliferation of Néel-order defects and indicative of a dynamical phase transition with no equilibrium analogs. Uncovering an intricate interplay between quantum prethermalization and emergent dynamical phases, our results demonstrate the use of quantum simulators for revealing complex non-equilibrium quantum many-body phenomena.
Neutral-atom quantum simulators offer a promising approach to the exploration of strongly interacting many-body systems, with applications spanning condensed matter, statistical mechanics, and high-energy physics. Through a combination of quantum experiments, numerical calculations, and analytical methods, we demonstrate a rich set of phenomena accessible on such quantum simulators by studying an array of Rydberg atoms placed on the Lieb lattice. First, we map out the ground states and phase diagram of the system, identifying a range of density-wave-ordered phases -- including a collinear phase stabilized purely by quantum fluctuations -- and find good agreement between theory and experiment. Allowing for local control of the detuning field thereafter, we discover a quantum analog of the classical liquid-vapor transition between two density-wave phases distinguished by sublattice occupation, and probe its underlying hysteretic dynamics. Furthermore, we study out-of-equilibrium quantum quenches and observe anomalously slow relaxation dynamics consistent with the kinetic constraints of an emergent string phase. These results highlight how geometric control offered by neutral-atom simulators can extend the frontiers of programmable quantum matter, enabling access to complex phases, metastability, and thermalization dynamics in many-body quantum systems.
Understanding emergent phenomena in out-of-equilibrium interacting many-body systems is an exciting frontier in physical science. While quantum simulators represent a promising approach to this long-standing problem, in practice it can be challenging to directly realize the required interactions, measure arbitrary observables, and mitigate errors. Here we use coherent mapping between the Rydberg and hyperfine qubits in a neutral atom array simulator to engineer and probe complex quantum dynamics. We combine efficient analog dynamics with fully programmable state preparation and measurement, leverage non-destructive readout for loss information and atomic qubit reuse, and use an atom reservoir for replacing lost atoms. With this analog-digital approach, we first demonstrate dynamical engineering of ring-exchange and particle hopping dynamics via Floquet driving and measure the spectral function of single excitations by evolving initial superposition states. Extending these techniques to a 271-site kagome lattice, we employ closed-loop optimization to target an out-of-equilibrium critical quantum spin liquid of the Rokhsar-Kivelson type. We observe the key features of such a state, including the absence of local order, many-body coherences between nearly equal-amplitude dimer configurations over up to 18 sites, and universal correlations consistent with predictions from field theory. Together, these results pave the way for using dynamical control in analog-digital quantum simulators to study complex quantum many-body systems.
Understanding the collective quantum dynamics of non-equilibrium many-body systems is an outstanding challenge in quantum science. In particular, dynamics driven by quantum fluctuations are important for the formation of exotic quantum phases of matter1, fundamental high-energy processes2, quantum metrology3,4 and quantum algorithms5. Here we use a programmable quantum simulator based on Rydberg atom arrays to experimentally study collective dynamics across a (2+1)-dimensional Ising quantum phase transition. After crossing the quantum critical point, we observe a gradual growth of correlations through coarsening of antiferromagnetically ordered domains6. By deterministically preparing and following the evolution of ordered domains, we show that the coarsening is driven by the curvature of domain boundaries, and find that the dynamics accelerate with proximity to the quantum critical point. We quantitatively explore these phenomena and further observe long-lived oscillations of the order parameter, corresponding to an amplitude (‘Higgs’) mode7. These observations offer a viewpoint into emergent collective dynamics in strongly correlated quantum systems and non-equilibrium quantum processes. A programmable quantum simulator based on Rydberg atom arrays is used to study the collective dynamics of a quantum phase transition and observe the phenomenon of quantum coarsening.
Strongly interacting many-body systems exhibit collective properties that emerge from complex correlations among microscopic degrees of freedom. These cooperative phenomena govern the non-equilibrium response of quantum systems, with relevance ranging from condensed matter physics to quantum field theories describing fundamental aspects of our universe. Understanding such emergent dynamics from first principles remains one of the central challenges in quantum many-body physics. Here we report on the observation of collective cluster nucleation dynamics following quenches in 2D ferromagnetic quantum Ising systems implemented in an atomic Rydberg array. Our experiments reveal two distinct regimes: In the confined regime, we observe an energy-dependent cluster size, revealing large collective clusters exceeding ten spins. In contrast, the deconfined regime is characterized by kinetically constrained, avalanche-like nucleation dynamics involving the entire system. Our findings establish a new frontier for quantum simulations with Rydberg arrays, enabling controlled exploration of non-equilibrium phenomena previously out of reach. Beyond advancing experimental capabilities, they provide fundamental insights into highly correlated processes with implications that reach from quantum magnetism and glassy dynamics to cosmological models of the early universe.
Periodically driven interacting quantum many-body systems can exhibit long-lived prethermal dynamics, where local observables retain coherent structure even as entanglement and operator complexity grow. Accessing this regime at the system sizes and times needed to determine physical properties of the prethermal state remains a central challenge: state-of-the-art classical methods become unreliable, while noise in quantum hardware degrades observable expectation values. Here we overcome these limitations for a Floquet Ising magnet realized on a heavy-hex lattice. Using the advanced error mitigation software QESEM on an IBM Heron r3 superconducting quantum processor, we measure magnetization dynamics with percent-level precision and resolve long-lived subharmonic prethermal oscillations in systems of up to 74 qubits. These experiments reach regimes for which leading tensor-network simulations fail to converge, while sparse Pauli-path simulations remain strongly truncation dependent despite extensive computations on advanced GPUs and the Fugaku supercomputer. Leveraging this quantum-accessible regime, we extend finite-size scaling to larger systems and find an unexpectedly slow decrease of the oscillation amplitude with system size, providing strong evidence that this oscillatory response persists in the thermodynamic limit of heavy-hex ladders. A hierarchy of mitigation and validation tests, including unbiased error mitigation, agreement between independent mitigation estimators, noise-model validation on the superconducting hardware, and cross-platform corroboration at selected Floquet cycles on Quantinuum System Model H2 and Quantinuum Helios trapped-ion hardware, supports the reliability of these findings. Our work establishes error-mitigated quantum processors as quantitative scientific instruments for discovering new physics in non-equilibrium quantum matter.
Major technological advances of the past century are rooted in our understanding of quantum physics in the non-interacting limit. A central challenge today is to understand the behavior of complex quantum many-body systems, where interactions play an essential role. About four decades ago, Richard Feynman proposed using controllable quantum systems to efficiently simulate complex physics and chemistry problems, envisioning quantum orreries, highly tunable quantum devices built to emulate less understood quantum systems. Here we ask whether quantum simulators have already uncovered new physical phenomena-and, if so, in which areas and with what impact. We find that, in several notable instances, they have advanced our understanding of many-body quantum dynamics. Although many of these insights could in principle have been obtained theoretically or numerically, they were nevertheless first achieved using quantum processors. While a broad landscape of problems beyond non-equilibrium dynamics still awaits exploration, it is encouraging that quantum simulators are already beginning to challenge and refine our conventional wisdom.