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One of the most challenging problems in the computational study of localization in quantum manybody systems is to capture the effects of rare events, which requires sampling over exponentially many disorder realizations. We implement an efficient procedure on a quantum processor, leveraging quantum parallelism, to efficiently sample over all disorder realizations. We observe localization without disorder in quantum many-body dynamics in one and two dimensions: perturbations do not diffuse even though both the generator of evolution and the initial states are fully translationally invariant. The disorder strength as well as its density can be readily tuned using the initial state. Furthermore, we demonstrate the versatility of our platform by measuring Renyi entropies. Our method could also be extended to higher moments of the physical observables and disorder learning.

Understanding how interacting particles approach thermal equilibrium is a major challenge of quantum simulators. Unlocking the full potential of such systems toward this goal requires flexible initial state preparation, precise time evolution, and extensive probes for final state characterization. We present a quantum simulator comprising 69 superconducting qubits which supports both universal quantum gates and high-fidelity analog evolution, with performance beyond the reach of classical simulation in cross-entropy benchmarking experiments. Emulating a two-dimensional (2D) XY quantum magnet, we leverage a wide range of measurement techniques to study quantum states after ramps from an antiferromagnetic initial state. We observe signatures of the classical Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition, as well as strong deviations from Kibble-Zurek scaling predictions attributed to the interplay between quantum and classical coarsening of the correlated domains. This interpretation is corroborated by injecting variable energy density into the initial state, which enables studying the effects of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) in targeted parts of the eigenspectrum. Finally, we digitally prepare the system in pairwise-entangled dimer states and image the transport of energy and vorticity during thermalization. These results establish the efficacy of superconducting analog-digital quantum processors for preparing states across many-body spectra and unveiling their thermalization dynamics.

Quantum many-body systems display rich phase structure in their low-temperature equilibrium states. However, much of nature is not in thermal equilibrium. Remarkably, it was recently predicted that out-of-equilibrium systems can exhibit novel dynamical phases that may otherwise be forbidden by equilibrium thermodynamics, a paradigmatic example being the discrete time crystal (DTC). Concretely, dynamical phases can be defined in periodically driven many-body localized systems via the concept of eigenstate order. In eigenstate-ordered phases, the entire many-body spectrum exhibits quantum correlations and long-range order, with characteristic signatures in late-time dynamics from all initial states. It is, however, challenging to experimentally distinguish such stable phases from transient phenomena, wherein few select states can mask typical behavior. Here we implement a continuous family of tunable CPHASE gates on an array of superconducting qubits to experimentally observe an eigenstate-ordered DTC. We demonstrate the characteristic spatiotemporal response of a DTC for generic initial states. Our work employs a time-reversal protocol that discriminates external decoherence from intrinsic thermalization, and leverages quantum typicality to circumvent the exponential cost of densely sampling the eigenspectrum. In addition, we locate the phase transition out of the DTC with an experimental finite-size analysis. These results establish a scalable approach to study non-equilibrium phases of matter on current quantum processors.

Interaction in quantum systems can spread initially localized quantum information into the many degrees of freedom of the entire system. Understanding this process, known as quantum scrambling, is the key to resolving various conundrums in physics. Here, by measuring the time-dependent evolution and fluctuation of out-of-time-order correlators, we experimentally investigate the dynamics of quantum scrambling on a 53-qubit quantum processor. We engineer quantum circuits that distinguish the two mechanisms associated with quantum scrambling, operator spreading and operator entanglement, and experimentally observe their respective signatures. We show that while operator spreading is captured by an efficient classical model, operator entanglement requires exponentially scaled computational resources to simulate. These results open the path to studying complex and practically relevant physical observables with near-term quantum processors.

We analyze a model of quantum nets and show it has non-abelian topological order of doubled Fibonacci type. The ground state has the same topological behavior as that of the corresponding string-net model, but our Hamiltonian can be defined on any lattice, has less complicated interactions, and its excitations are dynamical, not fixed. This Hamiltonian includes terms acting on the spins around a face, around a vertex, and special "Jones-Wenzl" terms that serve to couple long loops together. We provide strong evidence for a gap by exact diagonalization, completing the list of ingredients necessary for topological order., Comment: 5 pages. v2: minor rewriting

Groundstates of certain materials can support exotic excitations with a charge that's a fraction of the fundamental electron charge. The condensation of these fractionalized particles has been predicted to drive novel quantum phase transitions, which haven't yet been observed in realistic systems. Through numerical and theoretical analysis of a physical model of interacting lattice bosons, we establish the existence of such an exotic critical point, called XY*. We measure a highly non-classical critical exponent eta = 1.49(2), and construct a universal scaling function of winding number distributions that directly demonstrates the distinct topological sectors of an emergent Z_2 gauge field. The universal quantities used to establish this exotic transition can be used to detect other fractionalized quantum critical points in future model and material systems., Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures (+ supplemental)

The Landau paradigm of classifying phases by broken symmetries was demonstrated to be incomplete when it was realized that different quantum Hall states could only be distinguished by more subtle, topological properties. Today, the role of topology as an underlying description of order has branched out to include topological band insulators, and certain featureless gapped Mott insulators with a topological degeneracy in the groundstate wavefunction. Despite intense focus, very few candidates for these topologically ordered "spin liquids" exist. The main difficulty in finding systems that harbour spin liquid states is the very fact that they violate the Landau paradigm, making conventional order parameters non-existent. Here, we uncover a spin liquid phase in a Bose-Hubbard model on the kagome lattice, and measure its topological order directly via the topological entanglement entropy. This is the first smoking-gun demonstration of a non-trivial spin liquid, identified through its entanglement entropy as a gapped groundstate with emergent Z2 gauge symmetry., Comment: 4+ pages, 3 figures

We analyze the Bose-Hubbard model of hardcore bosons with nearest neighbor hopping and repulsive interactions on a star lattice using both quantum Monte Carlo simulation and dual vortex theory. We obtain the phase diagram of this model as a function of the chemical potential and the relative strength of hopping and interaction. In the strong interaction regime, we find that the Mott phases of the model at 1/2 and 1/3 fillings, in contrast to their counterparts on square, triangular, and Kagome lattices, are either translationally invariant resonant valence bond (RVB) phases with no density-wave order or have coexisting density-wave and RVB orders. We also find that upon increasing the relative strength of hopping and interaction, the translationally invariant Mott states undergo direct second order superfluid-insulator quantum phase transitions. We compute the critical exponents for these transitions and argue using the dual vortex picture that the transitions, when approached through the tip of the Mott lobe, belong to the inverted XY universality class., Comment: 10 pages, 18 figures, minor changes, two references added

We study the XXZ spin-one quantum magnet on the kagome lattice as an example where quantum fluctuations on highly degenerate classical ground states lead to various exotic quantum ground states. Previous studies have predicted several quantum phases, but different analytical approaches do not necessarily lead to the same physical picture. In this work, we use Quantum Monte Carlo computations to critically examine some of the predictions made in the string-net mean-field theory and the degenerate perturbation theory combined with duality analysis and effective field theory. It is found that the resulting phase diagram differs from some of the previous predictions. Further implications of our results to different analytical approaches are discussed., Comment: 6 pages, 12 figures

The classical Heisenberg model on the trillium and distorted windmill lattices exhibits a degenerate ground state within large-$N$ theory, where the degenerate wavevectors form a surface and line, in 3-dimensional space, respectively. We name such states partially ordered to represent the existence of long-range order along the direction normal to these degenerate manifolds. We investigate the effects of thermal fluctuations using Monte Carlo (MC) methods, and find a first order transition to a magnetically ordered state for both cases. We further show that the ordering on the distorted windmill lattice is due to order by disorder, while the ground state of the trillium lattice is unique. Despite these different routes to the realization of low temperature ordered phases, the static structure factors obtained by large-$N$ theory and MC simulations for each lattice show quantitative agreement in the cooperative paramagnetic regime at finite temperatures. This suggests that a remnant of the characteristic angle-dependent spin correlations of partial order remains above the transition temperatures for both lattices. The possible relevance of these results to $\beta$-Mn, CeIrSi, and MnSi is discussed., Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, published version

We investigate the interplay between commensurate lock-in and incommensurate supersolid phases of the hardcore bosons at half-filling with anisotropic nearest-neighbor hopping and repulsive interactions on triangular lattice. We use numerical quantum and variational Monte Carlo as well as analytical Schwinger boson mean-field analysis to establish the ground states and phase diagram. It is shown that, for finite size systems, there exist a series of jumps between different supersolid phases as the anisotropy parameter is changed. The density ordering wavevectors are locked to commensurate values and jump between adjacent supersolids. In the thermodynamic limit, however, the magnitude of these jumps vanishes leading to a continuous set of novel incommensurate supersoild phases., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, added new results, changed title and conclusion

We study a model of hard-core bosons on the kagome lattice with short-range hopping ($t$) and repulsive interactions ($V$). This model directly maps on to an easy-axis $S=1/2$ XXZ model on the kagome lattice and is also related, at large $V/t$, to a quantum dimer model on the triangular lattice. Using quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) numerics, we map out the phase diagram of this model at half-filling. At T=0, we show that this model exhibits a superfluid phase at small $V/t$ and an insulating phase at large $V/t$, separated by a continuous quantum phase transition at $V_c/t \approx 19.8$. The insulating phase at T=0 appears to have no conventional broken symmetries, and is thus a uniform Mott insulator (a `spin liquid' in magnetic language). We characterize this insulating phase as a uniform $Z_2$ fractionalized insulator from the topological order in the ground state and estimate its vison gap. Consistent with this identification, there is no apparent thermal phase transition upon heating the insulator. The insulating phase instead smoothly crosses over into the high temperature paramagnet via an intermediate cooperative paramagnetic regime. We also study the superfluid-to-normal thermal transition for $V < V_c$. We find that this is a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition at small $V/t$ but changes to a first order transition for $V$ closer to $V_c$. We argue that this first order thermal transition is consistent with the presence of a nearby $Z_2$ insulating ground state obtained from the superfluid ground state by condensing double vortices., Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, long version of cond-mat/0607778

We study the physics of hard-core bosons with unfrustrated hopping (t) and nearest-neighbor repulsion (V) on the three dimensional pyrochlore lattice. At half-filling, we demonstrate that the small V/t superfluid state eventually becomes unstable at large enough V/t to an unusual insulating state which displays no broken lattice translation symmetry. Equal time and static density correlators in this insulator are well described by a mapping to electric field correlators in the Coulomb phase of a U(1) lattice gauge theory, allowing us to identify this insulator with a U(1) fractionalized Mott-insulating state. The possibility of observing this phase in suitably designed atom-trap experiments with ultracold atoms is also discussed, as are specific experimental signatures., Comment: published version

Motivated by recent experiments on Na_4Ir_3O_8 [Y. Okamoto, M. Nohara, H. Aruga-Katori, and H. Takagi, arXiv:0705.2821 (unpublished)], we study the classical antiferromagnet on a frustrated three-dimensional lattice obtained by selectively removing one of four sites in each tetrahedron of the pyrochlore lattice. This ``hyperkagome'' lattice consists of corner-sharing triangles. We present the results of large-N mean field theory and Monte Carlo computations on O(N) classical spin models. It is found that the classical ground states are highly degenerate. Nonetheless a nematic order emerges at low temperatures in the Heisenberg model (N=3) via ``order by disorder'', representing the dominance of coplanar spin configurations. Implications for ongoing experiments are discussed., Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, published version