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Light-matter coupling via quantum pathways for spontaneous symmetry breaking in van der Waals antiferromagnetic semiconductors

Light-matter interaction simultaneously alters both the original material and incident light. Light not only reveals material details but also activates coupling mechanisms. The coupling has been demonstrated mechanically, for instance, through the patterning of metallic antennas, resulting in the emergence of plasmonic quasiparticles and enabling wavefront engineering of light via the generalized Snell’s law. However, quantum-mechanical light-matter interaction, wherein photons coherently excite distinct quantum pathways, remains poorly understood. Here, we report on quantum interference between light-induced quantum pathways through the orbital quantum levels and spin continuum. The quantum interference immediately breaks the symmetry of the hexagonal antiferromagnetic semiconductor FePS3. Below the Néel temperature, we observe the emergence of birefringence and linear dichroism, namely, quantum anisotropy due to quantum interference, which is further enhanced by the thickness effect. We explain the direct relevance of the quantum anisotropy to a quantum phase transition by spontaneous symmetry breaking in Mexican hat potential. Our findings suggest material modulation via selective quantum pathways through quantum light-matter interaction.

Dynamic thermalization on noisy quantum hardware

Emulating thermal observables on a digital quantum computer is essential for quantum simulation of many-body physics. However, thermalization typically requires a large system size due to incorporating a thermal bath, whilst limited resources of near-term digital quantum processors allow for simulating relatively small systems. We show that thermal observables and fluctuations may be obtained for a small closed system without a thermal bath. Thermal observables occur upon classically averaging quantum mechanical observables over randomized variants of their time evolution that run independently on a digital quantum processor. Using an IBM quantum computer, we experimentally find thermal occupation probabilities with finite positive and negative temperatures defined by the initial state’s energy. Averaging over random evolutions facilitates error mitigation, with the noise contributing to the temperature in the simulated observables. This result fosters probing the dynamical emergence of equilibrium properties of matter at finite temperatures on noisy intermediate-scale quantum hardware.

Collective quantum enhancement in critical quantum sensing

Critical systems represent a valuable resource in quantum sensing and metrology. Critical quantum sensing (CQS) protocols can be realized using finite-component phase transitions, where criticality arises from the rescaling of system parameters rather than the thermodynamic limit. Here, we show that a collective quantum advantage can be achieved in a multipartite CQS protocol using a chain of parametrically coupled critical resonators in the weak-nonlinearity limit. We derive analytical solutions for the low-energy spectrum of this unconventional quantum many-body system, which is composed of locally critical elements. We then assess the scaling of the quantum Fisher information with respect to fundamental resources. We demonstrate that the coupled chain outperforms an equivalent ensemble of independent critical sensors, achieving quadratic scaling in the number of resonators. Finally, we show that even with finite Kerr nonlinearity or Markovian dissipation, the critical chain retains its advantage, making it relevant for implementing quantum sensors with current microwave superconducting technologies.

Dynamical blockade of a reservoir for optimal performances of a quantum battery

The development of fast and efficient quantum batteries is crucial for the prospects of quantum technologies. In the present paper we demonstrate that both requirements are accomplished in the paradigmatic model of a harmonic oscillator strongly coupled to a highly non-Markovian thermal reservoir. We show that at short times, a dynamical blockade of the reservoir prevents the leakage of energy towards its degrees of freedom, promoting a significant accumulation of energy in the battery with high efficiency. The possibility of implementing these conditions in LC quantum circuits opens up new avenues for solid-state quantum batteries.

Stirring the false vacuum via interacting quantized bubbles on a 5,564-qubit quantum annealer

False vacuum decay—the transition from a metastable quantum state to a true vacuum state—plays an important role in quantum field theory and non-equilibrium phenomena such as phase transitions and dynamical metastability. The non-perturbative nature of false vacuum decay and the limited experimental access to this process make it challenging to study, leaving several open questions regarding how true vacuum bubbles form, move and interact. Here we observe quantized bubble formation in real time, a key feature of false vacuum decay dynamics, using a quantum annealer with 5,564 superconducting flux qubits. We develop an effective model that captures both initial bubble creation and subsequent interactions, and remains accurate under dissipation. The annealer reveals coherent scaling laws in the driven many-body dynamics for more than 1,000 intrinsic qubit time units. This work provides a method for investigating false vacuum dynamics of large quantum systems in quantum annealers.

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