Observation of a Quantum Phase Transition on a Trapped Ion Quantum Computer 

In this talk I will introduce our trapped ion quantum computer based on 171Yb+ clock qubits (previously at University of Maryland, and now located at the new Duke Quantum Center). The system is a fully-connected random-access universal quantum computer with up to 13 qubits in regular operation and individual addressing of each qubit. I will describe experiments designed to explore open quantum systems via random quantum circuits. Here, the system evolution is represented by unitary gates with interspersed projective measurements. As the measurement rate is varied a purification phase transition is predicted to emerge at a critical point, akin to a fault-tolerant threshold. We find evidence of the phases associated with the transition and show numerically that, with modest system scaling, critical properties of the transition emerge. Finally, I will highlight other recent applications using our system and give an outlook for the future of ion trap quantum computing.

References:

Noel et al. arXiv: 2106.05881
Egan et al.  Nature 598, 281–286 (2021)
Zhu et al arXiv: 2107.11387

Co-authors:  Pradeep Niroula, Daiwei Zhu, Andrew Risinger, Laird Egan, Debopriyo Biswas, Marko Cetina, Alexey V. Gorshkov, Michael J. Gullans, David A. Huse, Christopher Monroe

Bio: After her undergraduate degree in physics from MIT, Crystal did her PhD with Professor Hartmut Haeffner at UC Berkeley in Applied Science and Technology. She continued her research in trapped ion quantum computing with Professor Chris Monroe at University of Maryland as a postdoc. Crystal is currently working at the new Duke Quantum Center working on current trapped ion quantum computing systems and future technology. She will start officially as an assistant professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics in 2022 at Duke University.

Hosted By Mark Lawrence