Measurement of the work statistics of an open quantum system using a quantum computer

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates an experimental method to measure work statistics in open quantum systems using a quantum computer, extending interferometric schemes to probe system-bath interactions and validate theoretical fluctuation relations.

Contribution

It introduces an extension of the interferometric scheme for open systems and implements it on a superconducting quantum computer, enabling direct measurement of work statistics.

Findings

Successfully measured work statistics of an open quantum system.

Validated the interferometric scheme as a diagnostic tool.

Supported the Jarzynski equality in an open quantum context.

Abstract

We report on the experimental measurement of the work statistics of a genuinely open quantum system using a quantum computer. Such measurement has remained elusive thus far due to the inherent difficulty in measuring the total energy change of a system-bath compound (which is the work) in the open quantum system scenario. We overcome this difficulty by extending the interferometric scheme, originally conceived for closed systems, to the open system case and implement it on a superconducting quantum computer, taking advantage of the relatively high levels of noise on current quantum hardware to realize an open quantum system. We demonstrate that the method can be used as a diagnostic tool to probe physical properties of the system-bath compound, such as its temperature and specific transitions frequencies in its spectrum. Our experiments corroborate that the interferometric scheme is a promising tool to achieve the long-sought experimental validation of the Jarzynski equality for arbitrary open quantum systems.