Quantum anomaly for benchmarking quantum computing

Abstract:Given the rapid advances in quantum computing hardware, establishing strategies for verifying the correctness of quantum computations has become increasingly important. Exploiting the fact that the axial anomaly in gauge theories is exact to all orders in perturbation theory, we propose the axial anomaly as a nontrivial benchmark for quantum simulations of lattice gauge theories. We simulate axial charge production in ${\mathbb Z}_N$ lattice gauge theories on the trapped-ion quantum computer ``Reimei''. After taking the U(1), infinitesimal time, and infinite volume limits, we successfully reproduce the anomaly coefficient within statistical uncertainties, even without error mitigation. Our results demonstrate that the axial anomaly can be simulated on current quantum computers and serves as a verification test of quantum computations.

arXiv:2603.03697 [hep-lat]

(or arXiv:2603.03697v2 [hep-lat] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.03697 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

Phys. Rev. Research 8, 033349 (2026)

https://doi.org/10.1103/l8w6-pk4m Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources

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