Observation of Supersymmetry and its Spontaneous Breaking in a Trapped Ion Quantum Simulator

TL;DR

This paper reports the experimental realization of a supersymmetric quantum mechanics model using a trapped ion quantum simulator, demonstrating energy degeneracy and spontaneous SUSY breaking, thus providing insights into fundamental physics beyond the Standard Model.

Contribution

First experimental implementation of a SUSY quantum mechanics model in a trapped ion system, showcasing energy degeneracy and SUSY breaking phenomena.

Findings

Demonstrated energy degeneracy caused by SUSY

Observed spontaneous SUSY breaking

Measured supercharge of degenerate ground states

Abstract

Supersymmetry (SUSY) helps solve the hierarchy problem in high-energy physics and provides a natural groundwork for unifying gravity with other fundamental interactions. While being one of the most promising frameworks for theories beyond the Standard Model, its direct experimental evidence in nature still remains to be discovered. Here we report experimental realization of a supersymmetric quantum mechanics (SUSY QM) model, a reduction of the SUSY quantum field theory for studying its fundamental properties, using a trapped ion quantum simulator. We demonstrate the energy degeneracy caused by SUSY in this model and the spontaneous SUSY breaking. By a partial quantum state tomography of the spin-phonon coupled system, we explicitly measure the supercharge of the degenerate ground states, which are superpositions of the bosonic and the fermionic states. Our work demonstrates the trapped-ion quantum simulator as an economic yet powerful platform to study versatile physics in a single well-controlled system.