Quantum simulation of the bosonic Kitaev chain

Superconducting quantum circuits are a natural platform for quantum simulations of a wide variety of important lattice models describing topological phenomena, spanning condensed matter and high-energy physics. One such model is the bosonic analog of the well-known fermionic Kitaev chain, a 1D tight...

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Published inNature communications Vol. 15; no. 1; p. 3065
Main Authors Busnaina, Jamal H, Shi, Zheng, McDonald, Alexander, Dubyna, Dmytro, Nsanzineza, Ibrahim, Hung, Jimmy S C, Chang, C W Sandbo, Clerk, Aashish A, Wilson, Christopher M
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England Nature Publishing Group 09.04.2024
Nature Publishing Group UK
Nature Portfolio
Subjects
Boundary conditions
Coplanar waveguides
Lattice sites
Lattice vibration
Localization
Marine molluscs
Nearest-neighbor
Physics
Quadratures
Quantum theory
Sensitivity
Simulation
Simulators
Skin effect
Superconductivity
Topology
Wave functions
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Summary:Superconducting quantum circuits are a natural platform for quantum simulations of a wide variety of important lattice models describing topological phenomena, spanning condensed matter and high-energy physics. One such model is the bosonic analog of the well-known fermionic Kitaev chain, a 1D tight-binding model with both nearest-neighbor hopping and pairing terms. Despite being fully Hermitian, the bosonic Kitaev chain exhibits a number of striking features associated with non-Hermitian systems, including chiral transport and a dramatic sensitivity to boundary conditions known as the non-Hermitian skin effect. Here, using a multimode superconducting parametric cavity, we implement the bosonic Kitaev chain in synthetic dimensions. The lattice sites are mapped to frequency modes of the cavity, and the in situ tunable complex hopping and pairing terms are created by parametric pumping at the mode-difference and mode-sum frequencies, respectively. We experimentally demonstrate important precursors of nontrivial topology and the non-Hermitian skin effect in the bosonic Kitaev chain, including chiral transport, quadrature wavefunction localization, and sensitivity to boundary conditions. Our experiment is an important first step towards exploring genuine many-body non-Hermitian quantum dynamics.
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ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-47186-8