Many-body thermodynamics on quantum computers via partition function zeros

Quantum computers can study thermodynamics by finding zeros of functions in the complex plane. Partition functions are ubiquitous in physics: They are important in determining the thermodynamic properties of many-body systems and in understanding their phase transitions. As shown by Lee and Yang, an...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science advances 2021-08, Vol.7 (34)
Main Authors: Francis, Akhil, Zhu, Daiwei, Huerta Alderete, Cinthia, Johri, Sonika, Xiao, Xiao, Freericks, James K., Monroe, Christopher, Linke, Norbert M., Kemper, Alexander F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Condensed Matter Physics
Physics
SciAdv r-articles
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Quantum computers can study thermodynamics by finding zeros of functions in the complex plane. Partition functions are ubiquitous in physics: They are important in determining the thermodynamic properties of many-body systems and in understanding their phase transitions. As shown by Lee and Yang, analytically continuing the partition function to the complex plane allows us to obtain its zeros and thus the entire function. Moreover, the scaling and nature of these zeros can elucidate phase transitions. Here, we show how to find partition function zeros on noisy intermediate-scale trapped-ion quantum computers in a scalable manner, using the XXZ spin chain model as a prototype, and observe their transition from XY-like behavior to Ising-like behavior as a function of the anisotropy. While quantum computers cannot yet scale to the thermodynamic limit, our work provides a pathway to do so as hardware improves, allowing the future calculation of critical phenomena for systems beyond classical computing limits.
ISSN:2375-2548
2375-2548
DOI:10.1126/sciadv.abf2447