Experimental quantum simulation of fermion-antifermion scattering via boson exchange in a trapped ion

Abstract

Quantum field theories describe a variety of fundamental phenomena in physics. However, their study often involves cumbersome numerical simulations. Quantum simulators, on the other hand, may outperform classical computational capacities due to their potential scalability. Here we report an experimental realization of a quantum simulation of fermion-antifermion scattering mediated by bosonic modes, using a multilevel trapped ion, which is a simplified model of fermion scattering in both perturbative and non-perturbative quantum electrodynamics. The simulated model exhibits prototypical features in quantum field theory including particle pair creation and annihilation, as well as self-energy interactions. These are experimentally observed by manipulating four internal levels of a 171 Yb + trapped ion, where we encode the fermionic modes, and two motional degrees of freedom that simulate the bosonic modes. Our experiment establishes an avenue towards the efficient implementation of field modes, which may prove useful in studies of quantum field theories including non-perturbative regimes.

Quantum computation and simulation with vibrational modes of trapped ions

“…dynamics and even quantum computations. In addition, the quantum simulation that involves phonon states, or combinantion of the phonon and internal states of the ions [153][154][155][156][157] have addressed various physics problems, including even the problems of relativistic quantum mechanics [158,159], quantum field theory [160,161] and others.…”

Quantum Simulation of Quantum Field Theory in the Light-Front Formulation

“…Moving from simulation of many-particle quantum mechanics to relativistic quantum field theory poses new challenges. Quantum simulation of high energy physics may be approached via analog simulation of lattice gauge theories in cold atoms or ions [46][47][48][49][50][51][52], analog simulation using continuous variable quantum systems [53,54], or digital simulation of quantum field theories using conventional qubits and gates [9,[55][56][57]. Theoretical proposals for digital quantum simulation of quantum field theory [9,56,58,59] were followed by experimental implementations of simple models such as the Schwinger model in 1 + 1D [37,60].…”

A digital quantum simulation of the Agassi model

“…One of the emerging fields proposed for quantum simulations is the analysis of nuclear physics models. In particular, a cloud quantum computing of an atomic nucleus [2], a quantum-classical simulation of Schwingermodel dynamics [3], and quantum simulations of quantum field theories with trapped ions and superconducting circuits [4][5][6][7] have been proposed and sometimes experimentally realized. For a thorough review of this research field with updated references see Ref.…”