Visualizing Dynamics of Charges and Strings in (2+1)D Lattice Gauge Theories
Abstract
Lattice gauge theories (LGTs) can be employed to understand a wide range of phenomena, from elementary particle scattering in high-energy physics to effective descriptions of many-body interactions in materials. Studying dynamical properties of emergent phases can be challenging as it requires solving many-body problems that are generally beyond perturbative limits. Here, we investigate the dynamics of local excitations in a LGT using a two-dimensional lattice of superconducting qubits. We first construct a simple variational circuit which prepares low-energy states that have a large overlap with the ground state; then we create charge excitations with local gates and simulate their quantum dynamics via a discretized time evolution. As the electric field coupling constant is increased, our measurements show signatures of transitioning from deconfined to confined dynamics. For confined excitations, the electric field induces a tension in the string connecting them. Our method allows us to experimentally image string dynamics in a (2+1)D LGT from which we uncover two distinct regimes inside the confining phase: for weak confinement the string fluctuates strongly in the transverse direction, while for strong confinement transverse fluctuations are effectively frozen. In addition, we demonstrate a resonance condition at which dynamical string breaking is facilitated. Our LGT implementation on a quantum processor presents a novel set of techniques for investigating emergent excitations and string dynamics.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2409.17142,
title = {Visualizing Dynamics of Charges and Strings in (2+1)D Lattice Gauge Theories},
author = {Tyler A. Cochran and Bernhard Jobst and Eliott Rosenberg and Yuri D. Lensky and Gaurav Gyawali and Norhan Eassa and Melissa Will and Dmitry Abanin and Rajeev Acharya and Laleh Aghababaie Beni and Trond I. Andersen and Markus Ansmann and Frank Arute and Kunal Arya and Abraham Asfaw and Juan Atalaya and Ryan Babbush and Brian Ballard and Joseph C. Bardin and Andreas Bengtsson and Alexander Bilmes and Alexandre Bourassa and Jenna Bovaird and Michael Broughton and David A. Browne and Brett Buchea and Bob B. Buckley and Tim Burger and Brian Burkett and Nicholas Bushnell and Anthony Cabrera and Juan Campero and Hung-Shen Chang and Zijun Chen and Ben Chiaro and Jahan Claes and Agnetta Y. Cleland and Josh Cogan and Roberto Collins and Paul Conner and William Courtney and Alexander L. Crook and Ben Curtin and Sayan Das and Sean Demura and Laura De Lorenzo and Agustin Di Paolo and Paul Donohoe and Ilya Drozdov and Andrew Dunsworth and Alec Eickbusch and Aviv Moshe Elbag and Mahmoud Elzouka and Catherine Erickson and Vinicius S. Ferreira and Leslie Flores Burgos and Ebrahim Forati and Austin G. Fowler and Brooks Foxen and Suhas Ganjam and Robert Gasca and Élie Genois and William Giang and Dar Gilboa and Raja Gosula and Alejandro Grajales Dau and Dietrich Graumann and Alex Greene and Jonathan A. Gross and Steve Habegger and Monica Hansen and Matthew P. Harrigan and Sean D. Harrington and Paula Heu and Oscar Higgott and Jeremy Hilton and Hsin-Yuan Huang and Ashley Huff and William J. Huggins and Evan Jeffrey and Zhang Jiang and Cody Jones and Chaitali Joshi and Pavol Juhas and Dvir Kafri and Hui Kang and Amir H. Karamlou and Kostyantyn Kechedzhi and Trupti Khaire and Tanuj Khattar and Mostafa Khezri and Seon Kim and Paul V. Klimov and Bryce Kobrin and Alexander N. Korotkov and Fedor Kostritsa and John Mark Kreikebaum and Vladislav D. Kurilovich and David Landhuis and Tiano Lange-Dei and Brandon W. Langley and Kim-Ming Lau and Justin Ledford and Kenny Lee and Brian J. Lester and Loïck Le Guevel and Wing Yan Li and Alexander T. Lill and William P. Livingston and Aditya Locharla and Daniel Lundahl and Aaron Lunt and Sid Madhuk and Ashley Maloney and Salvatore Mandrà and Leigh S. Martin and Orion Martin 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 Ramis Movassagh and Charles Neill and Michael Newman and Anthony Nguyen and Murray Nguyen and Chia-Hung Ni and Murphy Yuezhen Niu and William D. Oliver and Kristoffer Ottosson and Alex Pizzuto and Rebecca Potter and Orion Pritchard and Chris Quintana and Ganesh Ramachandran and Matthew J. Reagor and David M. Rhodes and Gabrielle Roberts and Kannan Sankaragomathi and Kevin J. Satzinger and Henry F. Schurkus and Michael J. Shearn and Aaron Shorter and Noah Shutty and Vladimir Shvarts and Volodymyr Sivak and Spencer Small and W. Clarke Smith and Sofia Springer and George Sterling and Jordan Suchard and Aaron Szasz and Alex Sztein and Douglas Thor and M. Mert Torunbalci and Abeer Vaishnav and Justin Vargas and Sergey Vdovichev and Guifre Vidal and Catherine Vollgraff Heidweiller and Steven Waltman and Shannon X. Wang and Brayden Ware and Theodore White and Kristi Wong and Bryan W. K. Woo and Cheng Xing and Z. Jamie Yao and Ping Yeh and Bicheng Ying and Juhwan Yoo and Noureldin Yosri and Grayson Young and Adam Zalcman and Yaxing Zhang and Ningfeng Zhu and Nicholas Zobris and Sergio Boixo and Julian Kelly and Erik Lucero and Yu Chen and Vadim Smelyanskiy and Hartmut Neven and Adam Gammon-Smith and Frank Pollmann and Michael Knap and Pedram Roushan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.17142},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
Main article, methods, and supplemental materials