Journal Article

Observation of supersymmetry and its spontaneous breaking in a trapped ion quantum simulator

Jiang, Y., He, L., Zhou, Z.-C., Zhao, W.-D., Mei, Q.-X., Duan, L.-M., Yao, L., Cai, M.-L., Wu, Y.-K.

2022

Overview

Supersymmetry (SUSY) helps solve the hierarchy problem in high-energy physics and provides a natural groundwork for unifying gravity with other fundamental interactions. While being one of the most promising frameworks for theories beyond the Standard Model, its direct experimental evidence in nature still remains to be discovered. Here we report experimental realization of a supersymmetric quantum mechanics (SUSY QM) model, a reduction of the SUSY quantum field theory for studying its fundamental properties, using a trapped ion quantum simulator. We demonstrate the energy degeneracy caused by SUSY in this model and the spontaneous SUSY breaking. By a partial quantum state tomography of the spin-phonon coupled system, we explicitly measure the supercharge of the degenerate ground states, which are superpositions of the bosonic and the fermionic states. Our work demonstrates the trapped-ion quantum simulator as an economic yet powerful platform to study versatile physics in a single well-controlled system. Quantum simulators should be able to give insight on exotic physics models such as supersymmetric extensions of Standard Model. Here, the authors demonstrate a first step in this direction, realising a prototypical SUSY model (and spontaneous SUSY breaking within it) using a trapped ion quantum simulator.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group,Nature Portfolio
• Subject: 639/766/36 / 639/766/483/3926 / Humanities and Social Sciences / multidisciplinary / Physics / Quantum field theory / Quantum mechanics / Quantum theory / Science / Science (multidisciplinary) / Simulation / Simulators / Supersymmetry