![]() The researchers first looked at how the microwaves and a single qubit in the circuit can combine. “We are asking, ‘What type of physics emerges there and what type of interactions are possible?’” “In this paper, we asked the question, ‘What happens when you add qubits to the photons living on those hyperbolic lattices?’” Bienias says. With proper care, this type of simulation will provide a peek into how negatively curved spaces are a foundation for an entirely new world of physics. But other aspects of the physics, like the proportion of states that photons occupy at a given shared total energy, will be strongly influenced by the edge. The team found that certain properties, like how likely a qubit is to release a photon, shouldn’t be dramatically impacted by the circuit’s edge. So the team identified situations where the circuits should reflect the reality of an infinite curved space despite the circuit’s edge and situations where future researchers will have to interpret results carefully. This is especially important for hyperbolic lattices because they have nearly the same number of sites on the edge of the lattice as inside. In particular, the edges that must exist on the physical circuits used in the simulations must be carefully considered since scientists are often interested in an edgeless, infinite curved space. ![]() “Here we have a system where this curvature is huge and it's very exciting to see how it influences the physics.”įor researchers to use these simulations they need a detailed understanding of how the simulations represent a curved space and even more importantly under what situations the simulation fails. “This is a new frontier in tabletop experiments studying effects of curvature on physical phenomena,” says first author Przemyslaw Bienias, a former Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) assistant research scientist who is now working for Amazon Web Services as a Quantum Research Scientist. (Right image) A quantum state formed by a qubit (grey dot containing parallel black lines) and an attached microwave photon that can be found at one of the intersections of the grid representing a curved space. In both images, the darker colors show where photons are more likely to be found. (Left image) Microwave photons that create an interaction between pairs of qubits (black dots on the edge) in a hyperbolic space are most likely to travel along the shortest path (dotted line). Specifically, they considered the addition of qubits that change between two quantum states when they absorb or release a microwave photon-an individual quantum particle of the microwaves that course through the circuit. They’ve laid a theoretical framework for adding qubits-the basic building blocks of quantum computers-to serve as matter in a curved space made of a circuit full of flowing microwaves. 3, 2022, the same collaboration between the groups of Alicia Kollár and Alexey Gorshkov expands the potential applications of the technique to include simulating more intricate physics. Now, in a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters (link is external) on Jan. Our three-dimensional world doesn’t even have enough space for a two-dimensional negatively curved space. In particular, the team looked at hyperbolic lattices that represent spaces-called negatively curved spaces (link is external)-that have more space than can fit in our everyday “flat” space. A previous collaboration between researchers at JQI explored using labyrinthine circuits made of superconducting resonators to simulate the physics of certain curved spaces (see the previous story for additional background information and motivation of this line of research). Understanding curved spaces is important to expanding our knowledge of the universe, but it is fiendishly difficult to study curved spaces in a lab setting (even using simulations).
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