Search

We consider the quantum dynamics of a particle on a lattice for large times. Assuming translation invariance, and either discrete or continuous time parameter, the distribution of the ballistically scaled position $Q(t)/t$ converges weakly to a distribution that is compactly supported in velocity space, essentially the distribution of group velocity in the initial state. We show that the total probability of velocities strictly outside the support of the asymptotic measure goes to zero exponentially with $t$, and we provide a simple method to estimate the exponential rate uniformly in the initial state. Near the boundary of the allowed region the rate function goes to zero like the power 3/2 of the distance to the boundary. The method is illustrated in several examples., Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures

Reliable quantum technology requires knowledge of the dynamics governing the underlying system. This problem of characterizing and benchmarking quantum devices or experiments in continuous time is referred to as the Hamiltonian learning problem. In contrast to multi-qubit systems, learning guarantees for the dynamics of bosonic systems have hitherto remained mostly unexplored. For $m$-mode Hamiltonians given as polynomials in annihilation and creation operators with modes arranged on a lattice, we establish a simple moment criterion in terms of the particle number operator which ensures that learning strategies from the finite-dimensional setting extend to the bosonic setting, requiring only coherent states and heterodyne detection on the experimental side. We then propose an enhanced procedure based on added dissipation that even works if the Hamiltonian time evolution violates this moment criterion: With high success probability it learns all coefficients of the Hamiltonian to accuracy $\varepsilon$ using a total evolution time of $\mathcal{O}(\varepsilon^{-2}\log(m))$. Our protocol involves the experimentally reachable resources of projected coherent state preparation, dissipative regularization akin to recent quantum error correction schemes involving cat qubits stabilized by a nonlinear multi-photon driven dissipation process, and heterodyne measurements. As a crucial step in our analysis, we establish our moment criterion and a new Lieb-Robinson type bound for the evolution generated by an arbitrary bosonic Hamiltonian of bounded degree in the annihilation and creation operators combined with photon-driven dissipation. Our work demonstrates that a broad class of bosonic Hamiltonians can be efficiently learned from simple quantum experiments, and our bosonic Lieb-Robinson bound may independently serve as a versatile tool for studying evolutions on continuous variable systems.

Tensor networks provide succinct representations of quantum many-body states and are an important computational tool for strongly correlated quantum systems. Their expressive and computational power is characterized by an underlying entanglement structure, on a lattice or more generally a (hyper)graph, with virtual entangled pairs or multipartite entangled states associated to (hyper)edges. Changing this underlying entanglement structure into another can lead to both theoretical and computational benefits. We study a natural resource theory which generalizes the notion of bond dimension to entanglement structures using multipartite entanglement. It is a direct extension of resource theories of tensors studied in the context of multipartite entanglement and algebraic complexity theory, allowing for the application of the sophisticated methods developed in these fields to tensor networks. The resource theory of tensor networks concerns both the local entanglement structure of a quantum many-body state and the (algebraic) complexity of tensor network contractions using this entanglement structure. We show that there are transformations between entanglement structures which go beyond edge-by-edge conversions, highlighting efficiency gains of our resource theory that mirror those obtained in the search for better matrix multiplication algorithms. We also provide obstructions to the existence of such transformations by extending a variety of methods originally developed in algebraic complexity theory for obtaining complexity lower bounds. The resource theory of tensor networks allows to compare different entanglement structures and should lead to more efficient tensor network representations and contraction algorithms., Comment: 38 pages

Quantum hardware has the potential to efficiently solve computationally difficult problems in physics and chemistry to reap enormous practical rewards. Analogue quantum simulation accomplishes this by using the dynamics of a controlled many-body system to mimic those of another system; such a method is feasible on near-term devices. We show that previous theoretical approaches to analogue quantum simulation suffer from fundamental barriers which prohibit scalable experimental implementation. By introducing a new mathematical framework and going beyond the usual toolbox of Hamiltonian complexity theory with an additional resource of engineered dissipation, we show that these barriers can be overcome. This provides a powerful new perspective for the rigorous study of analogue quantum simulators., Comment: 59 pages, 11 figures; updated to reflect published version. Reformatted, many typos fixed, and a few additional minor technical results and explanations added

We determine spectra of single-particle translation-invariant Lindblad operators on the infinite line. In the case where the Hamiltonian is given by the discrete Laplacian and the Lindblad operators are rank $r$, finite range and translates of each other, we obtain a representation of the Lindbladian as a direct integral of finite range bi-infinite Laurent matrices with rank-$r$-perturbations. By analyzing the direct integral we rigorously determine the spectra in the general case and calculate it explicitly for several types of dissipation e.g.\ dephasing, and coherent hopping. We further use the detailed information about the spectrum to prove gaplessness, absence of residual spectrum and a condition for convergence of finite volume spectra to their infinite volume counterparts. We finally extend the discussion to the case of the Anderson Hamiltonian, which enables us to study a Lindbladian recently associated with localization in open quantum systems.

Characterizing the interactions and dynamics of quantum mechanical systems is an essential task in the development of quantum technologies. We propose an efficient protocol based on the estimation of the time derivatives of few qubit observables using polynomial interpolation for characterizing the underlying Hamiltonian dynamics and Markovian noise of a multi-qubit device. For finite range dynamics, our protocol exponentially relaxes the necessary time resolution of the measurements and quadratically reduces the overall sample complexity compared to previous approaches. Furthermore, we show that our protocol can characterize the dynamics of systems with algebraically decaying interactions. The implementation of the protocol requires only the preparation of product states and single-qubit measurements. Furthermore, we develop a shadow tomography method for quantum channels that is of independent interest. This protocol can be used to parallelize to learn the Hamiltonian, rendering it applicable for the characterization of both current and future quantum devices., Comment: 37 pages, 4 figures. Corrected gap in the proof of previous classical shadow process tomography protocols, included dissipation in the numerics, and improved presentation

The presence of chiral modes on the edges of quantum Hall samples is essential to our understanding of the quantum Hall effect. In particular, these edge modes should support ballistic transport and therefore, in a single particle picture, be supported in the absolutely continuous spectrum of the single-particle Hamiltonian. We show in this note that if a free fermion system on the two-dimensional lattice is gapped in the bulk, and has a nonvanishing Hall conductance, then the same system put on a half-space geometry supports edge modes whose spectrum fills the entire bulk gap and is absolutely continuous.

Randomized benchmarking (RB) refers to a collection of protocols that in the past decade have become central methods for characterizing quantum gates. These protocols aim at efficiently estimating the quality of a set of quantum gates in a way that is resistant to state preparation and measurement errors. Over the years many versions have been developed, however, a comprehensive theoretical treatment of RB has been missing. In this work, we develop a rigorous framework of RB general enough to encompass virtually all known protocols as well as novel, more flexible extensions. Overcoming previous limitations on error models and gate sets, this framework allows us, for the first time, to formulate realistic conditions under which we can rigorously guarantee that the output of any RB experiment is well-described by a linear combination of matrix exponential decays. We complement this with a detailed analysis of the fitting problem associated with RB data. We introduce modern signal processing techniques to RB, prove analytical sample complexity bounds, and numerically evaluate performance and limitations. In order to reduce the resource demands of this fitting problem, we introduce novel, scalable post-processing techniques to isolate exponential decays, significantly improving the practical feasibility of a large set of RB protocols. These post-processing techniques overcome shortcomings in efficiency of several previously proposed methods such as character benchmarking and linear-cross entropy benchmarking. Finally, we discuss, in full generality, how and when RB decay rates can be used to infer quality measures like the average fidelity. On the technical side, our work substantially extends the recently developed Fourier-theoretic perspective on RB by making use of the perturbation theory of invariant subspaces, as well as ideas from signal processing., Comment: 61 pages, 7 figures, replaced by final version in PRX Quantum

Tensor network states form a variational ansatz class widely used, both analytically and numerically, in the study of quantum many-body systems. It is known that if the underlying graph contains a cycle, e.g. as in projected entangled pair states (PEPS), then the set of tensor network states of given bond dimension is not closed. Its closure is the tensor network variety. Recent work has shown that states on the boundary of this variety can yield more efficient representations for states of physical interest, but it remained unclear how to systematically find and optimize over such representations. We address this issue by defining a new ansatz class of states that includes states at the boundary of the tensor network variety of given bond dimension. We show how to optimize over this class in order to find ground states of local Hamiltonians by only slightly modifying standard algorithms and code for tensor networks. We apply this new method to a different of models and observe favorable energies and runtimes when compared with standard tensor network methods., Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures. Close to published version

Discrete lattice models are a cornerstone of quantum many-body physics. They arise as effective descriptions of condensed matter systems and lattice-regularized quantum field theories. Lieb-Robinson bounds imply that if the degrees of freedom at each lattice site only interact locally with each other, correlations can only propagate with a finite group velocity through the lattice, similarly to a light cone in relativistic systems. Here we show that Lieb-Robinson bounds are equivalent to the locality of the interactions: a system with k-body interactions fulfills Lieb-Robinson bounds in exponential form if and only if the underlying interactions decay exponentially in space. In particular, our result already follows from the behavior of two-point correlation functions for single-site observables and generalizes to different decay behaviours as well as fermionic lattice models. As a side-result, we thus find that Lieb-Robinson bounds for single-site observables imply Lieb-Robinson bounds for bounded observables with arbitrary support., Comment: 4.5 + 7 pages, 1 figure; v2: Changed title, added references, improved presentation

We study quantum dichotomies and the resource theory of asymmetric distinguishability using a generalization of Strassen's theorem on preordered semirings. We find that an asymptotic variant of relative submajorization, defined on unnormalized dichotomies, is characterized by real-valued monotones that are multiplicative under the tensor product and additive under the direct sum. These strong constraints allow us to classify and explicitly describe all such monotones, leading to a rate formula expressed as an optimization involving sandwiched R\'enyi divergences. As an application we give a new derivation of the strong converse error exponent in quantum hypothesis testing., Comment: 21 pages

Tensor network states provide successful descriptions of strongly correlated quantum systems with applications ranging from condensed matter physics to cosmology. Any family of tensor network states possesses an underlying entanglement structure given by a graph of maximally entangled states along the edges that identify the indices of the tensors to be contracted. Recently, more general tensor networks have been considered, where the maximally entangled states on edges are replaced by multipartite entangled states on plaquettes. Both the structure of the underlying graph and the dimensionality of the entangled states influence the computational cost of contracting these networks. Using the geometrical properties of entangled states, we provide a method to construct tensor network representations with smaller effective bond dimension. We illustrate our method with the resonating valence bond state on the kagome lattice., Comment: 35 pages, 9 figures

We report on the experimental realization of electric quantum walks, which mimic the effect of an electric field on a charged particle in a lattice. Starting from a textbook implementation of discrete-time quantum walks, we introduce an extra operation in each step to implement the effect of the field. The recorded dynamics of such a quantum particle exhibits features closely related to Bloch oscillations and interband tunneling. In particular, we explore the regime of strong fields, demonstrating contrasting quantum behaviors: quantum resonances vs. dynamical localization depending on whether the accumulated Bloch phase is a rational or irrational fraction of 2\pi., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

What singles out quantum mechanics as the fundamental theory of Nature? Here we study local measurements in generalised probabilistic theories (GPTs) and investigate how observational limitations affect the production of correlations. We find that if only a subset of typical local measurements can be made then all the bipartite correlations produced in a GPT can be simulated to a high degree of accuracy by quantum mechanics. Our result makes use of a generalisation of Dvoretzky's theorem for GPTs. The tripartite correlations can go beyond those exhibited by quantum mechanics, however., Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure v2: more details in the proof of the main result

Quantum walks subject to decoherence generically suffer the loss of their genuine quantum feature, a quadratically faster spreading compared to classical random walks. This intuitive statement has been verified analytically for certain models and is also supported by numerical studies of a variety of examples. In this paper we analyze the long-time behavior of a particular class of decoherent quantum walks, which, to the best of our knowledge, was only studied at the level of numerical simulations before. We consider a local coin operation which is randomly and independently chosen for each time step and each lattice site and prove that, under rather mild conditions, this leads to classical behavior: With the same scaling as needed for a classical diffusion the position distribution converges to a Gaussian, which is independent of the initial state. Our method is based on non-degenerate perturbation theory and yields an explicit expression for the covariance matrix of the asymptotic Gaussian in terms of the randomness parameters.

We investigate a system of two atoms in an optical lattice, performing a quantum walk by state-dependent shift operations and a coin operation acting on the internal states. The atoms interact, e.g., by cold collisions, whenever they are in the same potential well of the lattice. Under such conditions they typically develop a bound state, so that the two atoms effectively perform a quantum walk together, rarely moving further from each other than a few lattice sites. The theoretical analysis is based on a theory of quantum walks with a point defect, applied to the difference variable. We also discuss the feasibility of an experimental realization in existing quantum walk experiments.

We study a spin-1/2-particle moving on a one dimensional lattice subject to disorder induced by a random, space-dependent quantum coin. The discrete time evolution is given by a family of random unitary quantum walk operators, where the shift operation is assumed to be deterministic. Each coin is an independent identically distributed random variable with values in the group of two dimensional unitary matrices. We derive sufficient conditions on the probability distribution of the coins such that the system exhibits dynamical localization. Put differently, the tunneling probability between two lattice sites decays rapidly for almost all choices of random coins and after arbitrary many time steps with increasing distance. Our findings imply that this effect takes place if the coin is chosen at random from the Haar measure, or some measure continuous with respect to it, but also for a class of discrete probability measures which support consists of two coins, one of them being the Hadamard coin., Comment: minor changes

We study the asymptotic position distribution of general quantum walks on a lattice, including walks with a random coin, which is chosen from step to step by a general Markov chain. In the unitary (i.e., non-random) case, we allow any unitary operator, which commutes with translations, and couples only sites at a finite distance from each other. For example, a single step of the walk could be composed of any finite succession of different shift and coin operations in the usual sense, with any lattice dimension and coin dimension. We find ballistic scaling, and establish a direct method for computing the asymptotic distribution of position divided by time, namely as the distribution of the discrete time analog of the group velocity. In the random case, we let a Markov chain (control process) pick in each step one of finitely many unitary walks, in the sense described above. In ballistic order we find a non-random drift, which depends only on the mean of the control process and not on the initial state. In diffusive scaling the limiting distribution is asymptotically Gaussian, with a covariance matrix (diffusion matrix) depending on momentum. The diffusion matrix depends not only on the mean but also on the transition rates of the control process. In the non-random limit, i.e., when the coins chosen are all very close, or the transition rates of the control process are small, leading to long intervals of ballistic evolution, the diffusion matrix diverges. Our method is based on spatial Fourier transforms, and the first and second order perturbation theory of the eigenvalue 1 of the transition operator for each value of the momentum., Comment: 34 pages, 20 figures