Precision quantum simulation of magnon spectra and interactions
Abstract
Quantum simulation promises to advance materials discovery by accurately simulating complex states of matter, their microscopic excitations, and macroscopic response functions. The central challenge in resolving the underlying interacting dynamics is to combine high-fidelity evolution with the sophisticated control necessary to manipulate individual quasi-particles in quantum many-body states. Here, we report on high-precision simulation of both linear and non-linear response functions in a 2D XY spin-1/2 magnet using an analog-digital superconducting processor of up to 97 qubits. By interleaving digital gates with analog evolution precisely characterized via Hamiltonian learning, we selectively excite magnons at tunable energy densities. Measuring first the linear magnon response -- a central probe in neutron-scattering experiments -- we extract temperature-dependent spectra and lifetimes. Our results reveal stark variations in magnon decay rates across the Brillouin zone, with enhancement near van Hove singularities and suppression for edge-localized modes. Next, we perform a suite of nonlinear measurements, including the study of self-scattering mechanisms, as well as pump-probe spectroscopy to directly characterize the magnon interactions. While matrix-product state simulations capture the dynamics well in either small systems or at low temperatures, their predictions become inaccurate away from these limits. This work demonstrates precise simulation of the interacting dynamics in quantum magnets, and provides key insights into quasi-particles and their microscopic scattering mechanisms.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.13301,
title = {Precision quantum simulation of magnon spectra and interactions},
author = {Trond I. Andersen and Nikita Astrakhantsev and Jeronimo Martinez and Will Morong and Johannes Motruk and Dario Rossi and Brayden Ware and Bryce Kobrin and Weijie Wu and Elizabeth Bennewitz and Manuel Rudolph and Tom Westerhout and Amira Abbas and Rajeev Acharya and Laleh Aghababaie Beni and Ross Alcaraz and Sayra Alcaraz and Markus Ansmann and Frank Arute and Kunal Arya and Walt Askew and Juan Atalaya and Christopher Ayala and Ryan Babbush and Brian Ballard and Joseph Bardin 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 Browne and Brett Buchea and Bob Buckley and Tim Burger and Brian Burkett and Jamal Busnaina and Nicholas Bushnell and Jonas Bylander 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 Cleland and Bryan Cochrane and Matt Cockrell and Josh Cogan and Paul Conner and Tom Connolly and Harold Cook and Rodrigo Cortinas and William Courtney and Alexander Crook and Benjamin Curtin and Adam Dally and Sayan Das and Martin Damyanov and Dripto Debroy and Himadri Dey and Stijn de Graaf and Laura De Lorenzo and Sean Demura and Lucia De Rose and Agustin Di Paolo and Leon Ding and Howard Dobbs and Paul Donohoe and Ebru Dogan and Ilya Drozdov and Andrew Dunsworth and Rasmus Edholm and Valerie Ehimhen and Alec Eickbusch and Aviv Elbag and Lior Ella and Mahmoud Elzouka and David Enriquez and Catherine Erickson and Lara Faoro and Vinicius 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 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 Goeders and Edward Gonzales and Raja Gosula and Alejandro Grajales Dau and Dietrich Graumann and Joel Grebel and Alex Greene and Jonathan Gross and Jose Guerrero and Tan Ha. and Steve Habegger and Tanner Hadick and Ali Hadjikhani and Michael Hamilton and Monica Hansen and Matthew Harrigan and Sean Harrington and Jeanne Hartshorn and Stephen Heslin and Paula Heu and Oscar Higgott and Reno Hiltermann and Jeremy Hilton and Hsin-Yuan Huang and Michael Hucka and Christopher Hudspeth and Ashley Huff and William Huggins and Aditya Jayaraman and Evan Jeffrey and Shaun Jevons and Zhang Jiang and Xiaoxuan Jin and Cody Jones and Chaitali Joshi and Kelsey Josund and Pavol Juhas and Andreas Kabel and Bharath Kannan and Hui Kang and Kiseo Kang and Amir Karamlou and Ryan Kaufman and Tanuj Khattar and Mostafa Khezri and Seon Kim and Paul Klimov and Can Knaut and Alexander Korotkov and Fedor Kostritsa and John Mark Kreikebaum and Ryuho Kudo and Arun Kumar and Ben Kueffler and Vladislav Kurilovich and Vitali Kutsko and Nathan Lacroix and Tiano Lange-Dei and Brandon Langley and Pavel Laptev and Kim-Ming Lau and Emma Leavell and Loïck Le Guevel and Justin Ledford and Joy Lee and Kenny Lee and Brian Lester and Wendy Leung and Matthew Lloyd and Lily Li and Wing Li and Ming Li and Alexander Lill and Mike Lindmark and William Livingston and Aditya Locharla and Erik Lucero and Daniel Lundahl and Aaron Lunt and Sid Madhuk and Donald Macaskill and Aniket Maiti and Ashley Maloney and Salvatore Mandra and Leigh Martin and Orion Martin and Eric Mascot and Paul Masih Das and Anselme Massimino and Melvin Mathews and Cameron Maxfield and Jarrod McClean and Matthew McEwen and Seneca Meeks and Anthony Megrant and Tim Menke and Kevin Miao and Zlatko Minev and Reza Molavi and Sebastian Molina and Shirin Montazeri and Akira Nakamura and Charles Neill and Konstantin Nesterov and Michael Newman and Roselle Ngaloy and Anthony Nguyen and Murray Nguyen and Chia-Hung Ni and Murphy Niu and Nicholas Noll and Sergey Novikov and Logan Oas and Ricky Oliver and Will Oliver and Raymond Orosco and Kristoffer Ottosson and Alice Pagano and Manan Patel and Sherman Peek and David Peterson and Alex Pizzuto and Thomas Plumb-Reyes and Elias Portoles and Rebecca Potter and Orion Pritchard and Sam Probst and Michael Qian and Chris Quintana and Matthew Rakher and Arpit Ranadive and Ganesh Ramachandran and Armin Razavi and Matthew Reagor and Rachel Resnick and David 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 Pedram Roushan and David Rower and Robert Salazar and Kannan Sankaragomathi and Murat Sarihan and Kevin Satzinger and Max Schaefer and Sebastian Schroeder and Henry Schurkus and Aria Shahingohar and Michael Shearn and Aaron Shorter and Shvarts Vladimir and Vlad Sivak and Spencer Small and W. Clarke Smith and David Sobel and Barrett Spells and Sofia Springer and George Sterling and Scott Stonemeyer and John Su and Jordan Suchard and Youngkyu Sung and Aaron Szasz and Alex Sztein and Tomoyuki Tanaka and Madeline Taylor and Jothi Thiruraman and Douglas Thor and Brandur Thorgrimsson and Dogan Timucin and Eifu Tomita and Alfredo Torres and M. Mert Torunbalci and Hao Tran and Abeer Vaishnav and Justin Vargas and Gopinath Vasalamarri and Sergey Vdovichev and Guifre Vidal and Benjamin Villalonga and Meghan Voorhees and Steven Waltman and Jonathan Waltz and Shannon Wang and Danni Wang and James Watson and Yonghua Wei and Travis Weidel and Theodore White and Kristi Wong and Bryan Woo and Christopher 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 Yiqing Zhou and Ningfeng Zhu and Nicholas Zobrist and Zhenjie Zou and Sergio Boixo and Yu Chen and Julian Kelly and Hartmut Neven and Vadim Smelyanskiy and Dvir Kafri and L. B. Ioffe and Kostyantyn Kechedzhi and Xiao Mi and Dmitry Abanin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.13301},
year = {2026}
}