Quantum simulation of a general anti-PT-symmetric Hamiltonian with a trapped ion qubit

Abstract

Non-Hermitian systems satisfying parity-time (PT) symmetry have aroused considerable interest owing to their exotic features. Anti-PT symmetry is an important counterpart of the PT symmetry, and has been studied in various classical systems. Although a Hamiltonian with anti-PT symmetry only differs from its PT-symmetric counterpart in a global $\pm$ i phase, the ways they change information and energy with the enivronment are completely different, suggesting an essential different dynamics in anti-PT-symmetric systems from their PT -symmetric variants. Moreover, theortical works have shown that qubits with anti-PT-symmetric Hamiltonians (anti-PT-symmetric qubits) have superior decoherence properties over Hermitian qubits, as well as PT-symmetric ones. So far, the observation of anti-PT symmetry in individual quantum systems remains elusive. Here, we implement an anti-PT -symmetric Hamiltonian of a single qubit in a single trapped ion by a designed microwave and optical control-pulse sequence. We characterize the anti-PT phase transition by mapping out the eigenvalues at different dissipation rates. The full inforamtion of the quantum state is also obtained by quantum state tomography. Our work allows quantum simulation of genuine open-system feature of an anti-PT-symmetric system, which paves the way for utilizing non-Hermitian properties for quantum information processing.

References in corpus (10)

• Observation of parity-time symmetry breaking in a single spin system
• Faster than Hermitian Quantum Mechanics
• Breaking Anti-$\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$ Symmetry by Spinning a Resonator
• Dynamically encircling an exceptional point in a real quantum system
• Observation of anti-parity-time-symmetry, phase transitions and exceptional points in an optical fibre
• Enhanced sensing of weak anharmonicities through coherences in dissipatively coupled anti-PT symmetric systems
• Observation of $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric quantum coherence in a single ion system
• Experimental demonstration of coherence flow in $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$- and anti-$\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric systems
• Anti-$\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric Kerr gyroscope
• Experimental Realization of Nonadiabatic Holonomic Single-Qubit Quantum Gates with Two Dark Paths in a Trapped Ion

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Quantum entanglement and non-Hermiticity in free-fermion systems
• Experimental demonstration of enhanced violations of Leggett-Garg inequalities in a $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric trapped-ion qubit
• Protection of quantum evolutions under parity-time symmetric non-Hermitian Hamiltonians by dynamical decoupling
• Stability of time-periodic $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$ and anti-$\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric Hamiltonians with different periodicities
• Bound states and decay dynamics in $N$-level Friedrichs model with factorizable interactions