Observation of disorder-induced superfluidity
Quantum Physics
2026-02-05 v2 Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Abstract
The emergence of states with long-range correlations in a disordered landscape is rare, as disorder typically suppresses the particle mobility required for long-range coherence. But when more than two energy levels are available per site, disorder can induce resonances that locally enhance mobility. Here we explore phases arising from the interplay between disorder, kinetic energy, and interactions on a superconducting processor with qutrit readout and control. Compressibility measurements distinguish an incompressible Mott insulator from surrounding compressible phases and reveal signatures of glassiness, reflected in non-ergodic behavior. Spatially-resolved two-point correlator measurements identify regions of the phase diagram with a non-vanishing condensate fraction. We also visualize the spectrum by measuring the dynamical structure factor. A linearly-dispersing phonon mode materializes in the superfluid, appearing even when disorder is introduced to the clean Mott insulator. Our results provide strong experimental evidence for disorder-induced superfluidity.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.21416,
title = {Observation of disorder-induced superfluidity},
author = {Nicole Ticea and Elias Portoles and Eliott Rosenberg and Alexander Schuckert and Aaron Szasz and Bryce Kobrin and Nicolas Pomata and Pranjal Praneel and Connie Miao and Shashwat Kumar and Ella Crane and Ilya Drozdov and Yuri Lensky and Sofia Gonzalez-Garcia and Thomas Kiely and Dmitry Abanin and Amira Abbas and Rajeev Acharya and Laleh Aghababaie Beni and Georg Aigeldinger and Ross Alcaraz and Sayra Alcaraz and Markus Ansmann and Frank Arute and Kunal Arya and Walt Askew and Nikita Astrakhantsev and Juan Atalaya and Ryan Babbush and Brian Ballard and Hector Bates and Andreas Bengtsson and Majid Bigdeli Karimi and Alexander Bilmes and Simon Bilodeau and Felix Borjans and Alexandre Bourassa and Jenna Bovaird and Dylan Bowers and Leon Brill and Peter Brooks and Michael Broughton and David A. Browne and Brett Buchea and Bob B. Buckley and Tim Burger and Brian Burkett and Jamal Busnaina and Nicholas Bushnell and Anthony Cabrera and Juan Campero and Hung-Shen Chang and Silas Chen and Zijun Chen and Ben Chiaro and Liang-Ying Chih and Agnetta Y. Cleland and Bryan Cochrane and Matt Cockrell and Josh Cogan and Paul Conner and Harold Cook and Rodrigo G. Cortiñas and William Courtney and Alexander L. Crook and Ben Curtin and Sayan Das and Martin Damyanov and Dripto M. Debroy and Stijn J. de Graaf and Laura De Lorenzo and Sean Demura and Lucia B. De Rose and Agustin Di Paolo and Paul Donohoe and Andrew Dunsworth and Valerie Ehimhen and Alec Eickbusch and Aviv Moshe Elbag and Lior Ella and Mahmoud Elzouka and David Enriquez and Catherine Erickson and Lara Faoro and Vinicius S. Ferreira and Marcos Flores and Leslie Flores Burgos and Sam Fontes and Ebrahim Forati and Jeremiah Ford and Brooks Foxen and Masaya Fukami and Alan Wing Lun Fung and Lenny Fuste and Suhas Ganjam and Gonzalo Garcia and Christopher Garrick and Robert Gasca and Helge Gehring and Robert Geiger and Élie Genois and William Giang and Dar Gilboa and James E. Goeders and Edward C. Gonzales and Raja Gosula and Alejandro Grajales Dau and Dietrich Graumann and Joel Grebel and Alex Greene and Jonathan A. Gross and Jose Guerrero and Tan Ha and Steve Habegger and Tanner Hadick and Ali Hadjikhani and Monica Hansen and Matthew P. Harrigan and Sean D. Harrington and Jeanne Hartshorn and Stephen Heslin and Paula Heu and Oscar Higgott and Reno Hiltermann and Jeremy Hilton and Hsin-Yuan Huang and Mike Hucka and Christopher Hudspeth and Ashley Huff and William J. Huggins and Evan Jeffrey and Shaun Jevons and Zhang Jiang and Xiaoxuan Jin and Cody Jones and Chaitali Joshi and Pavol Juhas and Andreas Kabel and Dvir Kafri and Hui Kang and Kiseo Kang and Amir H. Karamlou and Ryan Kaufman and Kostyantyn Kechedzhi and Julian Kelly and Tanuj Khattar and Mostafa Khezri and Seon Kim and Paul V. Klimov and Can M. Knaut and Alexander N. Korotkov and Fedor Kostritsa and John Mark Kreikebaum and Ryuho Kudo and Arun Kumar and Ben Kueffler and Vladislav D. Kurilovich and Vitali Kutsko and Nathan Lacroix and Tiano Lange-Dei and Brandon W. Langley and Pavel Laptev and Kim-Ming Lau and Emma Leavell and Loick Le Guevel and Justin Ledford and Joy Lee and Kenny Lee and Brian J. Lester and Wendy Leung and Matthew T. Lloyd and Lily L Li and Wing Yan Li and Ming Li and Alexander T. Lill and William P. Livingston and Aditya Locharla and Erik Lucero and Daniel Lundahl and Aaron Lunt and Sid Madhuk and Aniket Maiti and Ashley Maloney and Salvatore Mandrà and Leigh S. Martin and Orion Martin and Eric Mascot and Paul Masih Das and Dmitri Maslov and Melvin Mathews and Cameron Maxfield and Jarrod R. McClean and Matt McEwen and Seneca Meeks and Anthony Megrant and Kevin C. Miao and Reza Molavi and Sebastian Molina and Shirin Montazeri and Charles Neill and Michael Newman and Anthony Nguyen and Murray Nguyen and Chia-Hung Ni and Murphy Yuezhen Niu and Nicholas Noll and Logan Oas and William D. Oliver and Raymond Orosco and Kristoffer Ottosson and Alice Pagano and Sherman Peek and David Peterson and Alex Pizzuto and Rebecca Potter and Orion Pritchard and Michael Qian and Chris Quintana and Arpit Ranadive and Ganesh Ramachandran and Matthew J. Reagor and Rachel Resnick and David M. Rhodes and Daniel Riley and Gabrielle Roberts and Roberto Rodriguez and Emma Ropes and Eliott Rosenberg and Emma Rosenfeld and Dario Rosenstock and Elizabeth Rossi and David A. Rower and Robert Salazar and Kannan Sankaragomathi and Murat Can Sarihan and Kevin J. Satzinger and Sebastian Schroeder and Henry F. Schurkus and Aria Shahingohar and Michael J. Shearn and Aaron Shorter and Vladimir Shvarts and Volodymyr Sivak and Spencer Small and W. Clarke Smith and David A. Sobel and Barrett Spells and Sofia Springer and George Sterling and Jordan Suchard and Alexander Sztein and Madeline Taylor and Jothi Priyanka Thiruraman and Douglas Thor and Dogan Timucin and Eifu Tomita and Alfredo Torres and M. Mert Torunbalci and Hao Tran and Abeer Vaishnav and Justin Vargas and Sergey Vdovichev and Benjamin Villalonga and Catherine Vollgraff Heidweiller and Meghan Voorhees and Steven Waltman and Jonathan Waltz and Shannon X. Wang and Danni Wang and Brayden Ware and James D. Watson and Yonghua Wei and Travis Weidel and Theodore White and Kristi Wong and Bryan W. K. Woo and Christopher J. Wood and Maddy Woodson and Cheng Xing and Z. Jamie Yao and Ping Yeh and Bicheng Ying and Juhwan Yoo and Noureldin Yosri and Elliot Young and Grayson Young and Adam Zalcman and Ran Zhang and Yaxing Zhang and Ningfeng Zhu and Nicholas Zobrist and Zhenjie Zou and Sergio Boixo and Hartmut Neven and Vadim Smelyanskiy and Guifre Vidal and Erich Mueller and Trond Andersen and Lev Ioffe and Andre Petukhov and Mohammad Hafezi and Pedram Roushan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.21416},
year = {2026}
}
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