Simulations of lattice gauge theories on noisy quantum hardware inherently suffer from violations of the gauge symmetry due to coherent and incoherent errors of the underlying physical system that implements the simulation. These gauge violations cause the simulations to become unphysical requiring the result of the simulation to be discarded. We investigate an active correction scheme that relies on detecting gauge violations locally and subsequently correcting them by dissipatively driving the system back into the physical gauge sector. We show that the correction scheme not only ensures the protection of the gauge symmetry, but it also leads to a longer validity of the simulation results even within the gauge-invariant sector. Finally, we discuss further applications of the scheme such as preparation of the many-body ground state of the simulated system.
Simulations of lattice gauge theories on noisy quantum hardware inherently suffer from violations of the gauge symmetry due to coherent and incoherent errors of the underlying physical system that implements the simulation. These gauge violations cause the simulations to become unphysical requiring the result of the simulation to be discarded. We investigate an active correction scheme that relies on detecting gauge violations locally and subsequently correcting them by dissipatively driving the system back into the physical gauge sector. We show that the correction scheme not only ensures the protection of the gauge symmetry, but it also leads to a longer validity of the simulation results even within the gauge-invariant sector. Finally, we discuss further applications of the scheme such as preparation of the many-body ground state of the simulated system.
Simulations of lattice gauge theories on noisy quantum hardware inherently suffer from violations of the gauge symmetry due to coherent and incoherent errors of the underlying physical system that implements the simulation. These gauge violations cause the simulations to become unphysical requiring the result of the simulation to be discarded. We investigate an active correction scheme that relies on detecting gauge violations locally and subsequently correcting them by dissipatively driving the system back into the physical gauge sector. We show that the correction scheme not only ensures the protection of the gauge symmetry, but it also leads to a longer validity of the simulation results even within the gauge-invariant sector. Finally, we discuss further applications of the scheme such as preparation of the many-body ground state of the simulated system. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We present a protocol for actively suppressing Gauss law violations in quantum simulations of SU(2) lattice gauge theory. Mid-circuit measurements extract a syndrome (J,M,N) characterising the gauge-violation sector at each vertex by resolving both the total angular momentum and the magnetic quantum numbers of the violation through a group quantum Fourier transform. A syndrome-conditional recovery operation maps the state back to the gauge-invariant subspace, and the procedure is iterated as a sweep over vertices in a process we call gauge cooling. We prove that every single-qubit Pauli error at a coordination-four vertex with four spin-1/2 edges is detected by the gauge syndrome, and we show that the Knill--Laflamme conditions fail for syndrome-based recovery alone whenever the singlet multiplicity exceeds one. The residual physical-subspace errors carry a structured Pauli decomposition with vanishing Y component, which suggests compatibility with concatenation by a CSS stabilizer code. We demonstrate the protocol on a single-plaquette simulation of the Kogut--Susskind Hamiltonian truncated to the spin-1/2 representation under depolarising and amplitude damping noise, and we observe that gauge cooling restores approximate gauge invariance and improves fidelity at noise rates representative of current superconducting hardware.
With recent progress in quantum simulations of lattice-gauge theories, it is becoming a pressing question how to reliably protect the gauge symmetry that defines such models. Recently, an experimentally feasible gauge-protection scheme has been proposed that is based on the concept of a local pseudogenerator, which is required to act identically to the full gauge-symmetry generator in the target gauge sector, but not necessarily outside of it. The scheme has been analytically and numerically shown to reliably stabilize lattice gauge theories in the presence of perturbative errors on finite-size analog quantum-simulation devices. In this work, through uniform matrix product state calculations, we demonstrate the efficacy of this scheme for nonperturbative errors in analog quantum simulators up to all accessible evolution times in the thermodynamic limit, where it is a priori neither established nor expected that this scheme will succeed. Our results indicate the presence of an emergent gauge symmetry in an adjusted gauge theory even in the thermodynamic limit, which is beyond our analytic predictions. Additionally, we show through quantum circuit model calculations that gauge protection with local pseudogenerators also successfully suppresses gauge violations on finite quantum computers that discretize time through Trotterization. Our results firm up the robustness and feasibility of the local pseudogenerator as a viable tool for enforcing gauge invariance in modern quantum simulators and noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices.
We present a strategy for the quantum simulation of many-body lattice models with constrained Hilbert spaces. We focus on lattice gauge theories (LGTs), which underlie a wide range of phenomena in particle physics, condensed matter, and quantum information. In present-day quantum computing platforms, perfect restrictions of the Hilbert space to the desired gauge sectors are beyond reach: for LGTs, violations of the local constraint are unavoidable, posing a formidable challenge for the emulation of the underlying physics. Here, we develop a Floquet-engineering framework that restructures departures from a target sector such that a series of emergent local symmetries occurs hierarchically in time and in a controllable way. This leads to a set of approximate dynamical selection rules that strongly restrict inter-sector couplings, resulting in a pronounced, symmetry-controlled hierarchy of lifetimes for the state population to spread among sectors. Concretely, this protects U(1) LGTs against violations of the {defining} local symmetry. While some sectors remain very long-lived, others are destabilized on shorter timescales. We numerically verify our theory for the one-dimensional U(1) quantum link model. In addition, we reveal that `defects', whose movement accounts for violations of the gauge constraint, are kinetically constrained, becoming mobile only through the assistance of intra-sector dynamics, which we describe using an effective quantum marble model. Our results can thus be used to extend the lifetime, in the spirit of passive error correction, of quantum simulations of complex many-body problems when emergent or desired local symmetries are only implemented approximately.
Stabilizing Quantum Simulators Of Gauge Theories Against 1/f Noise
This work investigates the application of quantum simulation in the ongoing "second" quantum revolution, which employs various synthetic quantum matter platforms, such as ultracold atoms in optical lattices, Rydberg atoms, and superconducting qubits, to realize exotic condensed matter and particle physics phenomena with high precision and control. Gauge theories are of particular interest in modern quantum simulators as they offer a new probe of high-energy physics on low-energy tabletop devices. However, to accurately model gauge-theory phenomena on a quantum simulator, stabilizing the underlying gauge symmetry is crucial. Through this thesis we demonstrate that a recently developed experimentally feasible scheme based on linear gauge protection, initially devised to protect against coherent gauge breaking errors, can also be used to suppress incoherent errors arising from 1/fβ noise prominent in various quantum simulation platforms. The Bloch-Redfield formalism is introduced to model gauge violations arising due to these incoherent errors given the noise power spectrum of the environment. The efficacy of linear gauge protection in stabilizing salient features of gauge theories in quantum simulators, such as gauge invariance and exotic far from equilibrium phenomenon focusing on disorder-free localization, and quantum many-body scars against 1/fβ noise sources, is illustrated. These results are immediately applicable in modern analog quantum simulators and digital NISQ devices, paving the way for further development in the field of quantum simulation of lattice gauge theories.
Quantum measurements profoundly influence system dynamics. They lead to complex nonequilibrium phenomena like the quantum Zeno effect, and they can be used for mitigating errors in quantum simulations. Such an ability is particularly valuable for lattice gauge theories (LGTs), which require the challenging preservation of an extensive number of local conservation laws. While it is known that tailored quantum measurements can soften violations of gauge symmetry, the nature of this protection, and in particular the possibility of a threshold behavior, is still unexplored. Here, we demonstrate the existence of a sharp transition, triggered by the measurement rate, between a protected gauge-theory regime resistant to simulation errors and an irregular regime. Our results are based on the paradigmatic example of a (1+1)-dimensional Z2 LGT. We study in detail the protection through projective measurements of ancillary qubits coupled to the local symmetry generators, and compare this approach with analog (weak) measurement protocols. We show that, while the resulting ensemble averages in the continuous-time limit share the same Liouvillian dynamics, different physical implementations of the stochastic gauge protection protocol yield trajectory unravelings with vastly different statistics. Additionally, we design an on-chip feedback mechanism that corrects bit-flip errors and significantly enhances the discrete-time scheme. Our results shed light on the dissipative criticality of strongly interacting, highly constrained quantum systems, and they offer valuable insights into error mitigation and correction of gauge-theory quantum simulations.