Dynamic Induction of Lattice Gauge Theories on a Quantum Computer

Abstract:Gauge invariance is central to modern physics and underpins quantum simulations of lattice gauge theories (LGTs). Existing quantum simulation approaches employ Gauss's law either to energetically suppress gauge-violating processes in analog platforms or to detect and discard gauge-violating outcomes in digital devices. Here we introduce a third paradigm, in which Gauss's law is used to dynamically generate the gauge theory itself from a substantially simpler Hamiltonian. Starting from a readily programmable three-body XXX model, we employ experimentally efficient single-qubit U(1) gauge symmetry-generator terms that induce the dynamics of a U(1) LGT. We implement this approach using 101 qubits on a 156-qubit IBM quantum processor and observe real-time dynamics in quantitative agreement with the target LGT while reducing the entangling-gate depth per Trotter step by a factor of five compared with a direct implementation. Our results establish gauge protection as a resource for Hamiltonian engineering rather than merely symmetry preservation, opening a scalable resource-efficient route towards digital quantum simulations of increasingly complex gauge theories in higher spatial dimensions.

Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas); High Energy Physics - Lattice (hep-lat)

arXiv:2608.02756 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2608.02756v1 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.02756 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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