Real-time simulation of light-driven spin chains on quantum computers

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates real-time simulation of light-driven spin chains on IBM quantum computers, showing that with error mitigation, these devices can accurately model Floquet dynamics in small quantum systems.

Contribution

It introduces methods for simulating Floquet systems and light-driven spin chains on current quantum hardware, highlighting the importance of error mitigation techniques.

Findings

Quantum devices can simulate Floquet dynamics with error mitigation.

Time-dependent properties match effective Floquet Hamiltonian evolution.

Simulations are successful for small spin chains with error correction.

Abstract

In this work, we study the real-time evolution of periodically driven (Floquet) systems on a quantum computer using IBM quantum devices. We consider a driven Landau-Zener model and compute the transition probability between the Floquet steady states as a function of time. We find that for this simple one-qubit model, Floquet states can develop in real-time, as indicated by the transition probability between Floquet states. Next, we model light-driven spin chains and compute the time-dependent antiferromagnetic order parameter. We consider models arising from light coupling to the underlying electrons as well as those arising from light coupling to phonons. For the two-spin chains, the quantum devices yield time evolutions that match the effective Floquet Hamiltonian evolution for both models once readout error mitigation is included. For three-spin chains, zero-noise extrapolation yields a time dependence that follows the effective Floquet time evolution. Therefore, the current IBM quantum devices can provide information on the dynamics of small Floquet systems arising from light drives once error mitigation procedures are implemented.