Understanding analog quantum simulation dynamics in coupled ion-trap qubits

TL;DR

This paper numerically investigates the dynamics of a disordered long-range transverse-field Ising model in trapped-ion systems, confirming experimental observations of many-body localization and suggesting future research directions.

Contribution

It provides numerical verification of many-body localization in a disordered long-range Ising model, aligning with recent experimental results and exploring state preservation and entanglement.

Findings

Verification of many-body localization at strong disorder

Analysis of eigenstate entanglement structure

Implications for future trapped-ion experiments

Abstract

We study numerically a disordered transverse-field Ising Hamiltonian with long-range couplings. This model was recently investigated experimentally in a trapped-ion quantum simulator and was found to exhibit features of many-body localization at strong disorder. We use exact diagonalization to study the collective state preservation and the eigenstate entanglement structure as a function of both disorder strength and interaction range. Our numerical results, using the same system sizes as the experiment, verify the observation of many-body localization reported in the recent quantum simulation experiment, and point to directions for future experiments.