Journal Article

A site-resolved two-dimensional quantum simulator with hundreds of trapped ions

Xu, Y.-Z., Guo, W.-X., Ye, J., Duan, L.-M., Qi, B.-X., Xu, Y.-L., Zhang, C., Yan, R.-Y., He, L., Lian, W.-Q., Zhou, Z.-C., Guo, S.-A., Yao, R., Li, B.-W., Yi, Y.-J., Zhang, L., Hou, Y.-H., Wang, Y., Wu, Y.-K.

2024

Overview

A large qubit capacity and an individual readout capability are two crucial requirements for large-scale quantum computing and simulation 1 . As one of the leading physical platforms for quantum information processing, the ion trap has achieved a quantum simulation of tens of ions with site-resolved readout in a one-dimensional Paul trap 2 – 4 and of hundreds of ions with global observables in a two-dimensional (2D) Penning trap 5 , 6 . However, integrating these two features into a single system is still very challenging. Here we report the stable trapping of 512 ions in a 2D Wigner crystal and the sideband cooling of their transverse motion. We demonstrate the quantum simulation of long-range quantum Ising models with tunable coupling strengths and patterns, with or without frustration, using 300 ions. Enabled by the site resolution in the single-shot measurement, we observe rich spatial correlation patterns in the quasi-adiabatically prepared ground states, which allows us to verify quantum simulation results by comparing the measured two-spin correlations with the calculated collective phonon modes and with classical simulated annealing. We further probe the quench dynamics of the Ising model in a transverse field to demonstrate quantum sampling tasks. Our work paves the way for simulating classically intractable quantum dynamics and for running noisy intermediate-scale quantum algorithms 7 , 8 using 2D ion trap quantum simulators. In this work, stable trapping of a two-dimensional Wigner crystal of above 500 ions is achieved, and the quantum simulation of 300 ions with individual state detection demonstrated.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: 639/766/483/3926 / 639/766/483/481 / Computer Simulation / Cooling / Crystals / Data processing / Humanities and Social Sciences / Information processing / Ions / Ions - chemistry / Ising model / Lasers / multidisciplinary / Phonons / Quantum computing / Quantum phenomena / Quantum Theory / Qubits (quantum computing) / Science / Science (multidisciplinary) / Simulated annealing / Simulation / Simulators