Observation of spin-1 tunneling on a quantum computer

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the explicit observation of spin-1 tunneling and energy level splitting on IBM's quantum computer by encoding spin-1 with two spin-1/2 particles and analyzing their quantum dynamics.

Contribution

It presents the first explicit experimental observation of spin-1 tunneling and energy splitting on a quantum computer, using a novel encoding with two spin-1/2 qubits.

Findings

Observed oscillations between spin-1 states |1> and |-1>

Quantified energy level splitting of the spin-1 system

Demonstrated tunneling dynamics on a real quantum device

Abstract

Spin-1 tunneling and splitting of energy levels as a result of tunneling are observed explicitly on IBM's quantum computer, ibmq-bogota. The spin-1 is realized with two spins-1/2. We detect oscillations of spin-1 between the states $|1\rangle$, $|-1\rangle$ in the result of tunneling on the basis of studies of the time dependence of the mean value of z-component of spin-1 on the quantum device. The energy level splitting is observed quantifying on the IBM's quantum computer the eigenvalues of Hamiltonian which describes the spin tunneling.