In nonequilibrium quantum systems, the quantum Mpemba effect (QME) emerges as a counterintuitive phenomenon: Systems exhibiting greater initial symmetry breaking restore symmetry faster. It has been attracting broad interest in studying QME dynamics and potential applications in quantum information science. While theoretical exploration of QME has surged, experimental studies, specifically on its flexible modulation, remain limited. Here, we report the observation and modulation of QME using a superconducting processor featuring an all-to-all connected, tunable-coupling architecture that enables precise control from short-to long-range interactions. This platform allows independent manipulation of coupling regimes, on-site potentials, and initial states, enabling us to elucidate their roles in QME. To quantify symmetry restoration, we employ entanglement asymmetry (EA), derived from the reconstructed density matrix via quantum state tomography, as a sensitive probe. In strong short-range coupling regimes, EA crossovers during quenches from tilted Neel states confirm the presence of QME. In contrast, in intermediate-coupling regimes, synchronized EA and entanglement entropy dynamics reveal the suppression of QME. Remarkably, QME reemerges with the introduction of on-site linear potentials or quenches from tilted ferromagnetic states, the latter proving robust against on-site disorder. Our study demonstrates flexible QME modulation on a superconducting platform with multiple controllable parameters, shedding light on quantum many-body nonequilibrium dynamics and opening avenues for quantum information applications.

Quantum simulators allow the experimental exploration of nonequilibrium quantum many-body dynamics, which have traditionally been characterized through expectation values or entanglement measures, based on density matrices of the system. Recently, a more general framework for studying quantum many-body systems based on projected ensembles has been introduced, revealing quantum phenomena, such as deep thermalization in chaotic systems. Here, we experimentally investigate a chaotic quantum many-body system using projected ensembles on a three-dimensional-integrated frequency-tunable superconducting processor, enabling both high-fidelity control and scalable architecture. Our results provide direct evidence of deep thermalization by observing a Haar-distributed projected ensemble for the steady states within a charge-conserved sector. Moreover, by introducing an ensemble-averaged entropy as a metric, we establish a benchmark for many-body information leakage from the system to its environment. Our work paves the way for studying quantum many-body dynamics using projected ensembles, and the scalability of our benchmark method represents a notable advance toward quantum computation and simulation.

Quantum simulators offer a new opportunity for the experimental exploration of non-equilibrium quantum many-body dynamics, which have traditionally been characterized through expectation values or entanglement measures, based on density matrices of the system. Recently, a more general framework for studying quantum many-body systems based on projected ensembles has been introduced, revealing novel quantum phenomena, such as deep thermalization in chaotic systems. Here, we experimentally investigate a chaotic quantum many-body system using projected ensembles on a superconducting processor with 16 qubits on a square lattice. Our results provide direct evidence of deep thermalization by observing a Haar-distributed projected ensemble for the steady states within a charge-conserved sector. Moreover, by introducing an ensemble-averaged entropy as a metric, we establish a benchmark for many-body information leakage from the system to its environment. Our work paves the way for studying quantum many-body dynamics using projected ensembles and shows a potential implication for advancing quantum simulation techniques.

Lattice gauge theories provide a non-perturbative framework for understanding confinement and hadronic physics, but their real-time dynamics remain challenging for classical computations. However, quantum simulators offer a promising alternative for exploring such dynamics beyond classical capabilities. Here, we experimentally investigate meson scattering using a superconducting quantum processor. Employing a digital protocol, we realize a Floquet spin chain equivalent to a one-dimensional Floquet ℤ_2 lattice gauge theory. We observe Bloch oscillations of single kinks and strong binding between adjacent kinks, signaling confinement and the formation of stable mesons in this Floquet system. Using full-system joint readout, we resolve meson populations by string length, enabling identification of meson scattering channels. Our results reveal the fragmentation of a long-string meson into multiple short-string mesons, which is also an experimental signature of string breaking. Moreover, we directly observe inelastic meson scattering, where two short-string mesons can merge into a longer one. Our results pave the way for studying interacting gauge particles and composite excitations on digital quantum simulators.

We introduce bipartite projected ensembles (BPEs) for quantum many-body wave functions, which consist of pure states supported on two local subsystems, with each state associated with the outcome of a projective measurement of the complementary subsystem in a fixed local basis. We demonstrate that the corresponding ensemble-averaged entanglements (EAEs) between two subsystems can effectively identify entanglement phases. In volume-law entangled states, EAE converges to a nonzero value with increasing distance between subsystems. For critical systems, EAE exhibits power-law decay, and it decays exponentially for area-law systems. Thus, entanglement phase transitions can be viewed as a disordered-ordered phase transition. We also apply BPE and EAE to measured random Clifford circuits to probe measurement-induced phase transitions. We show that EAE not only serves as a witness to phase transitions, but also unveils additional critical phenomena properties, including dynamical scaling and surface critical exponents. Our findings provide an alternative approach to diagnosing entanglement laws, thus enhancing the understanding of entanglement phase transitions. Moreover, given the accessibility of measuring EAE in quantum simulators, our results hold promise for impacting quantum simulations.

The existence of zero -dimensional superradiant quantum phase transitions seems inconsistent with conventional statistical physics. This work clarifies this apparent inconsistency. We demonstrate the corresponding effective field theories and finite -temperature properties of light -matter interacting systems, and show how this zero -dimensional quantum phase transition occurs. We first focus on the Rabi model, which is a minimum model that hosts a superradiant quantum phase transition. With the path -integral method, we derive the imaginary -time action of the photon degrees of freedom. We also define a dynamical critical exponent as the rescaling between the temperature and the photon frequency, and perform dimensional analysis to the effective action. The dynamical critical exponent shows that the effective theory of the Rabi model is a free scalar field, where a true second -order quantum phase transition emerges. These results are also verified by numerical simulations of imaginary -time correlation functions of the order parameter. Furthermore, we also generalize this method to the Dicke model. Our results make the zero -dimensional superradiant quantum phase transition compatible with conventional statistical physics, and pave the way to understand it in the perspective of effective field theories.

We investigate the multipartite entanglement for a slow quantum quench crossing a critical point. We consider the quantum Ising model and the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model, which are local and full-connected quantum systems, respectively. The multipartite entanglement is quantified by quantum Fisher information with the generator defined as the operator of the ferromagnetic order parameter. The quench dynamics begins with a ground state in a paramagnetic phase, and then the transverse field is driven slowly to cross a quantum critical point, and ends with a zero transverse field. For the quantum Ising model, based on methods of matrix product states, we calculate the quantum Fisher information density of the final state. Numerical results of both linear and nonlinear quenches show that the quantum Fisher information density of the final state scales as a power law of the quench rate, which overall conforms to the prediction of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism with a small correction. We show that this correction results from the long-range behaviors. We also calculate the quantum Fisher information density in the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model. The results show that the scaling of quantum Fisher information in this full-connected system conforms to the Kibble-Zurek mechanism better, since the long-range physics cannot be defined in this nonlocal system. Our results reveal that the multipartite entanglement provides an alternative viewpoint to understand the dynamics of quantum phase transitions, specifically, the nontrivial long-range physics.

We investigate the meson excitations (particle-antiparticle bound states) in quantum many-body scars of a 1D Z_{2} lattice gauge theory coupled to a dynamical spin-1/2 chain as a matter field. By introducing a string representation of the physical Hilbert space, we express a scar state |Ψ_{n,l}⟩ as a superposition of all string bases with an identical string number n and a total length l. For the small-l scar state |Ψ_{n,l}⟩, the gauge-invariant spin exchange correlation function of the matter field hosts an exponential decay as the distance increases, indicating the existence of stable mesons. However, for large l, the correlation function exhibits a power-law decay, signaling the emergence of nonmesonic excitations. Furthermore, we show that this mesonic-nonmesonic crossover can be detected by the quench dynamics, starting from two low-entangled initial states, respectively, which are experimentally feasible in quantum simulators. Our results expand the physics of quantum many-body scars in lattice gauge theories and reveal that the nonmesonic state can also manifest ergodicity breaking.

We investigate a spin -1/2 fermion chain minimally coupled to a Z2 gauge field. In the sector of the gauge generator (G) over cap (j) = -1, the model reduces to the Hubbard model with repulsive on-site interaction coupled to a Z2 gauge field. We uncover how electric fields affect low-energy excitations by both analytical and numerical methods. In the half-filling case, despite electric fields, the system is still a Mott insulator, just like the Hubbard model. For hole-doped systems, holes are confined under nonzero electric fields, resulting in a hole-pair bound state. Furthermore, this bound state also significantly affects the superconductivity, which manifests itself in the emergence of attractive interactions between bond-singlet Cooper pairs. Specifically, numerical results reveal that the dimension of the dominant superconducting order parameter becomes smaller when increasing the electric field, signaling an enhancement of the superconducting instability induced by lattice fermion confinement. The superconducting order can even be the dominant order of the system for suitable doping and large applied electric field. The confinement also induces a pi momentum for the dominant superconducting order parameter leading to a quasi-long-range pair density wave order. Our results provide insights for understanding unconventional superconductivity in Z2 lattice gauge theories and might be experimentally addressed in quantum simulators.

We investigate a spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ fermion chain minimally coupled to a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge field. In the sector of the gauge generator $\hat G_j =-1$, the model reduces to the Hubbard model with repulsive onsite interaction coupled to a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge field. We uncover how electric fields affect low-energy excitations by both analytical and numerical methods. In the half-filling case, despite electric fields, the system is still a Mott insulator, just like the Hubbard model. For hole-doped systems, holes are confined under nonzero electric fields, resulting in a hole-pair bound state. Furthermore, this bound state also significantly affects the superconductivity, which manifests itself in the emergence of attractive interactions between bond singlet Cooper pairs. Specifically, numerical results reveal that the dimension of the dominant superconducting order parameter becomes smaller when increasing the electric field, signaling an enhancement of the superconducting instability induced by lattice fermion confinement. The superconducting order can even be the dominant order of the system for suitable doping and large applied electric field. The confinement also induces a $\pi$ momentum for the dominant superconducting order parameter leading to a quasi-long-range pair density wave order. Our results provide insights for understanding unconventional superconductivity in $\mathbb{Z}_2$ LGTs and might be experimentally addressed in quantum simulators.

Hawking radiation is one of the quantum features of a black hole that can be understood as a quantum tunneling across the event horizon of the black hole, but it is quite difficult to directly observe the Hawking radiation of an astrophysical black hole. Here, we report a fermionic lattice-model-type realization of an analogue black hole by using a chain of 10 superconducting transmon qubits with interactions mediated by 9 transmon-type tunable couplers. The quantum walks of quasi-particle in the curved spacetime reflect the gravitational effect near the black hole, resulting in the behaviour of stimulated Hawking radiation, which is verified by the state tomography measurement of all 7 qubits outside the horizon. In addition, the dynamics of entanglement in the curved spacetime is directly measured. Our results would stimulate more interests to explore the related features of black holes using the programmable superconducting processor with tunable couplers.

Quantum computers promise to solve finite-temperature properties of quantum many-body systems, which is generally challenging for classical computers due to high computational complexities. Here, we report experimental preparations of Gibbs states and excited states of Heisenberg XX and XXZ models by using a 5-qubit programmable superconducting processor. In the experiments, we apply a hybrid quantum–classical algorithm to generate finite temperature states with classical probability models and variational quantum circuits. We reveal that the Hamiltonians can be fully diagonalized with optimized quantum circuits, which enable us to prepare excited states at arbitrary energy density. We demonstrate that the approach has a self-verifying feature and can estimate fundamental thermal observables with a small statistical error. Based on numerical results, we further show that the time complexity of our approach scales polynomially in the number of qubits, revealing its potential in solving large-scale problems.

Lattice gauge theories (LGTs) are one of the most fundamental subjects in many-body physics, and has recently attracted considerable research interests in quantum simulations. Here we experimentally investigate the emergent Z(2) gauge invariance in a 1D superconducting circuit with 10 transmon qubits. By precisely adjusting staggered longitudinal and transverse fields to each qubit, we construct an effective Hamiltonian containing an LGT and gauge-broken terms. The corresponding matter sector can exhibit a localization, and there also exists a 3-qubit operator, of which the expectation value can retain nonzero for a long time in low-energy regimes. The above localization can be regarded as the confinement of matter fields, and the 3-body operator is the Z(2) gauge generator. These experimental results demonstrate that, despite the absence of gauge structure in the effective Hamiltonian, Z(2) gauge invariance can still emerge in low-energy regimes. Our work provides a method for both theoretically and experimentally studying the rich physics in quantum many-body systems with emergent gauge invariance.

Simulating response properties of molecules is crucial for interpreting experimental spectroscopies and accelerating materials design. However, it remains a long-standing computational challenge for electronic structure methods on classical computers. While quantum computers hold the promise of solving this problem more efficiently in the long run, existing quantum algorithms requiring deep quantum circuits are infeasible for near-term noisy quantum processors. Herein, we introduce a pragmatic variational quantum response (VQR) algorithm for response properties, which circumvents the need for deep quantum circuits. Using this algorithm, we report the first simulation of linear response properties of molecules including dynamic polarizabilities and absorption spectra on a superconducting quantum processor. Our results indicate that a large class of important dynamical properties, such as Green's functions, are within the reach of near-term quantum hardware using this algorithm in combination with suitable error mitigation techniques.

Operator spreading, often characterized by out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs), is one of the central concepts in quantum many-body physics. However, measuring OTOCs is experimentally challenging due to the requirement of reversing the time evolution of systems. Here we apply Floquet engineering to investigate operator spreading in a superconducting 10-qubit chain. Floquet engineering provides an effective way to tune the coupling strength between nearby qubits, which is used to demonstrate quantum walks with tunable couplings, reversed time evolution, and the measurement of OTOCs. A clear light-cone-like operator propagation is observed in the system with multiple excitations, and has a nearly equal velocity as the single-particle quantum walk. For the butterfly operator that is nonlocal (local) under the Jordan-Wigner transformation, the OTOCs show distinct behaviors with (without) a signature of information scrambling in the near integrable system.

Kaixuan Huang2,3†, Xiaoxia Cai1†, Hao Li3,7†, Zi-Yong Ge, Ruijuan Hou, Hekang Li, Tong Liu, Yunhao Shi, Chitong Chen, Dongning Zheng, Kai Xu3,4,6∗, Zhi-Bo Liu2∗, Zhendong Li1∗, Heng Fan3,4,6∗, Wei-Hai Fang 1 Key Laboratory of Theoretical and Computational Photochemistry, Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China 2 The Key Laboratory of Weak Light Nonlinear Photonics, Ministry of Education, Teda Applied Physics Institute and School of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300457, China 3 Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China 4 School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China 5 Theoretical Quantum Physics Laboratory, RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research, Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan 6 CAS Center for Excellence in Topological Quantum Computation, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China 7 School of Physics, Northwest University, Xi’an 710127, China † These authors contributed equally; ∗ To whom correspondence should be addressed; E-mail: kaixu@iphy.ac.cn, liuzb@nankai.edu.cn, zhendongli@bnu.edu.cn, hfan@iphy.ac.cn

The Loschmidt echo is a useful diagnostic for the perfection of quantum time-reversal process and the sensitivity of quantum evolution to small perturbations. The main challenge for measuring the Loschmidt echo is the time reversal of a quantum evolution. In this work, we demonstrate the measurement of the Loschmidt echo in a superconducting 10-qubit system using Floquet engineering and discuss the imperfection of an initial Bell-state recovery arising from the next-nearestneighbor（NNN） coupling present in the qubit device. Our results show that the Loschmidt echo is very sensitive to small perturbations during quantum-state evolution, in contrast to the quantities like qubit population that is often considered in the time-reversal experiment. These properties may be employed for the investigation of multiqubit system concerning many-body decoherence and entanglement, etc., especially when devices with reduced or vanishing NNN coupling are used.

规范理论是现代物理学中描述基本粒子相互作用的基本语言,是标准模型等理论的基石,也和量子叠加、量子纠缠概念密切相关.人们熟知时空对称性,例如在比萨斜塔做质量不等物体的自由落体实验,与在不同时间不同地点做类似实验所得到的结论会完全相同;而规范理论描述的是另一类对称性,是关于不改变时空坐标时场的一种局域变换,

We investigate a spin-1/2 fermion chain minimally coupled to a ℤ_2 gauge field. In the sector of the gauge generator Ĝ_j =-1, the model reduces to the Hubbard model with repulsive onsite interaction coupled to a ℤ_2 gauge field. We uncover how electric fields affect low-energy excitations by both analytical and numerical methods. In the half-filling case, despite electric fields, the system is still a Mott insulator, just like the Hubbard model. For hole-doped systems, holes are confined under nonzero electric fields, resulting in a hole-pair bound state. Furthermore, this bound state also significantly affects the superconductivity, which manifests itself in the emergence of attractive interactions between bond singlet Cooper pairs. Specifically, numerical results reveal that the dimension of the dominant superconducting order parameter becomes smaller when increasing the electric field, signaling an enhancement of the superconducting instability induced by lattice fermion confinement. The superconducting order can even be the dominant order of the system for suitable doping and large applied electric field. The confinement also induces a π momentum for the dominant superconducting order parameter leading to a quasi-long-range pair density wave order. Our results provide insights for understanding unconventional superconductivity in ℤ_2 LGTs and might be experimentally addressed in quantum simulators.

Hao-Yu Sun,1, 2 Zi-Yong Ge,3, ∗ and Heng Fan1, 2, 4, 5, 6, † Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China Theoretical Quantum Physics Laboratory, RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research, Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, Dongguan 523808, Guangdong, China CAS Center for Excellence in Topological Quantum Computation, UCAS, Beijing 100190, China Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, Beijing 100193, China (Dated: February 17, 2022)