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Tunable quantum simulation of spin models with a two-dimensional ion crystal

Nature Physics volume 20, pages 623–630 (2024)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 12 February 2024

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Abstract

Quantum spin models have been extensively used to study the properties of strongly correlated systems and to find approximate solutions to combinatorial optimization problems. Trapped-ion systems have reliably demonstrated the quantum simulation of various quantum spin models in one-dimensional chains. The extension of trapped-ion simulators to two dimensions has been an enticing goal for decades. Here we present the quantum simulation of Ising models with two-dimensional ion crystals in a Paul trap. We benchmark the simulator by implementing various spin models with complex interaction networks and adiabatically prepare the corresponding ground states. Spin–spin interactions with different signs and sufficiently large strengths are generated by driving different vibrational modes. We probe the quantum coherence of the simulation by reversing the ramping profile of the transverse field to the initial value and then quantify the probability of returning to the initial state. Then, we test the scalability of the system for a large-scale quantum simulation. Our results show that major portions of the spin states are in the ground state even for highly frustrated spin models.

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Fig. 1: Quantum simulation of frustrated quantum magnets with 2D ion crystal.
Fig. 2: Verification of quantum simulation with a 2D crystal having four ions.
Fig. 3: Quantum simulation and quantum coherence of various spin models with a seven-ion 2D crystal.
Fig. 4: Benchmarking of quantum simulation with increasing number of spins in a 2D ion crystal.

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All relevant data are available from the corresponding authors upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank L. You, J. Bollinger and J. Freericks for carefully reading the manuscript. This work was supported by the Innovation Program for Quantum Science and Technology under grant no. 2021ZD0301602, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant nos. 92065205, 11974200 and 62335013.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Physics, Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Mu Qiao, Zhengyang Cai, Botao Du, Naijun Jin, Wentao Chen, Chunyang Luan, Erfu Gao, Ximo Sun, Haonan Tian & Kihwan Kim

  2. Hefei National Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, People’s Republic of China

    Ye Wang & Kihwan Kim

  3. Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Pengfei Wang, Jingning Zhang & Kihwan Kim

  4. Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Kihwan Kim

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Contributions

K.K. and M.Q. conceived the idea and designed the experiments. M.Q., Z.C., Y.W., B.D. and N.J. with assistance from W.C., P.W., C.L., E.G., X.S. and H.T. developed the experimental system. M.Q. with the help of J.Z. optimized the experimental schemes. M.Q. took and analysed the data. K.K. supervised the project. M.Q., K.K., Z.C., E.G. and Y.W. contributed to the writing of the manuscript with the agreement of all other authors.

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Correspondence to Mu Qiao or Kihwan Kim.

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Qiao, M., Cai, Z., Wang, Y. et al. Tunable quantum simulation of spin models with a two-dimensional ion crystal. Nat. Phys. 20, 623–630 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-023-02378-9

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