Quantum simulation provides important tools in studying strongly correlated many-body systems with controllable parameters. As a hybrid of two fundamental models in quantum optics and in condensed matter physics, the Rabi-Hubbard model demonstrates rich physics through the competition between local spin-boson interactions and long-range boson hopping. Here we report an experimental realization of the Rabi-Hubbard model using up to 16 trapped ions and present a controlled study of its equilibrium properties and quantum dynamics. We observe the ground-state quantum phase transition by slowly quenching the coupling strength, and measure the quantum dynamical evolution in various parameter regimes. With the magnetization and the spin-spin correlation as probes, we verify the prediction of the model Hamiltonian by comparing theoretical results in small system sizes with experimental observations. For larger-size systems of 16 ions and 16 phonon modes, the effective Hilbert space dimension exceeds 257, whose dynamics is intractable for classical supercomputers.
@article{arxiv.2110.03227,
title = {Experimental Realization of the Rabi-Hubbard Model with Trapped Ions},
author = {Quanxin Mei and Bowen Li and Yukai Wu and Minglei Cai and Ye Wang and Lin Yao and Zichao Zhou and Luming Duan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.03227},
year = {2022}
}