TY - JOUR T1 - Observation of a Many-Body Dynamical Phase Transition with a 53-Qubit Quantum Simulator JF - Nature Y1 - 2017 A1 - J. Zhang A1 - G. Pagano A1 - P. W. Hess A1 - A. Kyprianidis A1 - P. Becker A1 - H. Kaplan A1 - Alexey V. Gorshkov A1 - Z. -X. Gong A1 - C. Monroe AB -

A quantum simulator is a restricted class of quantum computer that controls the interactions between quantum bits in a way that can be mapped to certain difficult quantum many-body problems. As more control is exerted over larger numbers of qubits, the simulator can tackle a wider range of problems, with the ultimate limit being a universal quantum computer that can solve general classes of hard problems. We use a quantum simulator composed of up to 53 qubits to study a non-equilibrium phase transition in the transverse field Ising model of magnetism, in a regime where conventional statistical mechanics does not apply. The qubits are represented by trapped ion spins that can be prepared in a variety of initial pure states. We apply a global long-range Ising interaction with controllable strength and range, and measure each individual qubit with near 99% efficiency. This allows the single-shot measurement of arbitrary many-body correlations for the direct probing of the dynamical phase transition and the uncovering of computationally intractable features that rely on the long-range interactions and high connectivity between the qubits.

VL - 551 U4 - 601-604 UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24654 U5 - 10.1038/nature24654 ER -