Topological two-dimensional Floquet lattice on a single superconducting qubit

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the implementation of a single-qubit Floquet Hamiltonian on a superconducting qubit, realizing a topological Chern insulator and observing a topological transition, showcasing quantum simulation capabilities of NISQ devices.

Contribution

It introduces a method to implement Floquet Hamiltonians on a single qubit and experimentally realizes a topological phase transition, advancing quantum simulation of topological matter.

Findings

Successful realization of a Floquet Chern insulator on a single qubit

Observation of a topological transition via quantum simulation

Highlights potential and challenges of simulating many-body systems with quantum computers

Abstract

Previous theoretical and experimental research has shown that current NISQ devices constitute powerful platforms for analogue quantum simulation. With the exquisite level of control offered by state-of-the-art quantum computers, we show that one can go further and implement a wide class of Floquet Hamiltonians, or timedependent Hamiltonians in general. We then implement a single-qubit version of these models in the IBM Quantum Experience and experimentally realize a temporal version of the Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang Chern insulator. From our data we can infer the presence of a topological transition, thus realizing an earlier proposal of topological frequency conversion by Martin, Refael, and Halperin. Our study highlights promises and limitations when studying many-body systems through multi-frequency driving of quantum computers.