Quantum dynamics in frustrated Ising fullerenes

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how quantum fluctuations can lift degeneracy in frustrated Ising fullerene models, providing a benchmark for quantum simulators and showing performance improvements in superconducting quantum annealers.

Contribution

It introduces fullerene Ising models with quantum fluctuations as a new benchmark for quantum simulation, highlighting their utility in testing and improving quantum annealers.

Findings

Quantum fluctuations lift degeneracy in fullerene Ising models.

Superconducting quantum annealers show performance improvements using these models.

Fullerene Ising models serve as effective benchmarks for quantum simulation technologies.

Abstract

The complex energy landscapes exhibited by frustrated magnetic systems undergoing quantum fluctuations are a challenge to accurately simulate, and thus of great interest for testing diverse qubit platforms in the field of quantum simulation. This study experimentally demonstrates quantum fluctuations lifting the degenerate ground-state manifold of classical magnetic configurations in fullerene Ising models with resonating dimers. The interplay between degeneracy and quantum fluctuations makes these boundary-free models a suitable benchmark for quantum simulators. Indeed, we observe significant performance improvement across generations of superconducting quantum annealers, showing the potential of highly symmetric, frustrated systems for assessing the precision of quantum-simulation technologies.