Quantum Physics
Quantum Networking at the Speed of Quantum Computation: Kilohertz Entanglement in a Heterogeneous Quantum System
Lukas Hartung, Pierre Barral, Noah Glachman et al. (+35 more)
Distributed
quantum computing requires rapid, high-fidelity
entanglement between
qubits in separate processor modules. Photonic links between single-atom
qubits provide switchable, long-range connections, but
photon loss limits their
entanglement rate. Here we entangle a trapped $^{138}$Ba$^{+}$ ion with a silicon-vacancy (SiV$^{-}$) center in a diamond nanophotonic cavity. A
photon emitted by the ion is converted in wavelength and encoding, reflected from the SiV$^{-}$–cavity system and detected, so that a single detected
photon heralds
entanglement. Including all conversion losses, we generate ion–SiV$^{-}$ Bell pairs at an average rate of 1.03(1) kHz with a fidelity of 87.9(7)%. This is four times the rate of the fastest photonic link between two trapped ions and corresponds to one Bell pair per millisecond, matching the cycle time of planned trapped-ion processors.
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All authors Lukas Hartung, Pierre Barral, Noah Glachman, George Toh, Jacob H. Davidson, Sagnik Saha, Alexander Chuang, Matthew C. Cambria, Madison Sutula, Alexander Abulnaga, Julia Brevoord, John Chiaverini, Ian Counts, Aos Dabbagh, Christian Dangel, Skylar Deckoff-Jones, Chawina De-Eknamkul, Jonathan Dietz, Riley Forst, Prithvi Gundlapalli, Jeonghoon Ha, Michael Haas, Ezekiel Meulbroek, Andrea Mucchietto, Daniel Riedel, Jonah Sachs, Jeremy Sage, Mikhail Shalaev, Harriet Shi, Denis Sukachev, Yichao Yu, Christopher Monroe, Nicholas Mondrik, Mihir Bhaskar, Bart Machielse, Matteo Pompili, Carsten Robens, David Levonian
Quantum Physics · Cross-listed from hep-th
Scattering entanglement entropy between one particle species and the others
Yuan-Hao Zheng and Jiayin Gu
We construct the
entanglement entropy of a general scattering process between one particle species (denoted as $A$) and the rest of the final state. Assuming a pure initial momentum eigenstate, we show that the reduced density
matrix in particle $A$'s Fock space is block-diagonal in zero-, one- and multi-particle states, and is diagonal in the momentum basis for the one-particle state. As a result, we could write down the Von Neumann
entropy of particle $A$, $S_A$, in terms of scattering probabilities and differential cross sections, assuming no more than one particle $A$ is produced in the final state. $S_A$ contains the information of both the total scattering probabilities (or cross sections) and the differential distributions — the latter depends on a phase-space resolution factor as a result of the infinite-dimensional momentum
Hilbert space. Our result is general and model-independent since we consider the full final state from time
evolution ($S|i\rangle$) rather than a specific outcome, and is applicable as long as the probability for producing multiple particle $A$ is subleading. We also obtain the $n\geq2$ Tsallis and Rényi
entropies in our framework and find out that, at the leading order, they are proportional to the total scattering probability and carry no differential information.
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Quantum Physics
Combining Error Verification and Privacy Amplification in Quantum Key Distribution
Devashish Tupkary, Zhiyao Wang and Ernest Y.-Z. Tan
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocols typically involve two separate steps of error-verification and
privacy amplification. Both steps involve the application of a hash function sampled from a suitable hash family to classical data. A potentially simpler alternative is to implement a single-step hashing procedure, announce and compare a fixed number of bits of its output for error-verification, and retain the remaining bits as the final output key. This reduces the complexity of classical postprocessing, the amount of classical communication, and the amount of randomness needed in the protocol. While this construction has appeared in the literature, a suitable mathematical justification is lacking. In this work, we show that the security of such protocols, under certain simple conditions, follows from a slightly modified notion of secrecy of the protocol without the final error-verification step. In particular, we show that for most
entropy-based proofs, the combined protocol can be implemented with no change to the key rate, and a minor change to the security parameter.
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Quantum Physics · Cross-listed from cond-mat.mes-hall
Millisecond phonon lifetimes in piezoelectric nanomechanical resonators
Oliver A. Hitchcock, Matthew P. Maksymowych, Kaveh Pezeshki et al. (+5 more)
Piezoelectric nanomechanical resonators operating at gigahertz frequencies are a promising platform for
quantum information processing and precision sensing, but
phonon lifetimes have been limited to the microsecond range, widely attributed to the higher intrinsic loss of piezoelectric materials. Here we show that this limitation is not fundamental. Using a fabrication process informed by recent studies of defect-mediated loss in lithium niobate, we combine chemical restoration of ion-milled surfaces with a shadow-mask metallization process to produce lithium niobate phononic
crystal resonators with inferred internal
phonon lifetimes of up to 21 milliseconds at 3.6 gigahertz, corresponding to quality factors exceeding $4\times10^8$ ($f\cdot Q_i > 10^{18}$) at millikelvin temperatures. By systematically varying the electrode-to-resonator spacing, we demonstrate that the measured lifetime is set by external coupling between the device and the measurement
circuit rather than material loss. This establishes that lithium niobate, once fabrication-induced surface damage is removed, achieves an intrinsic quality comparable to the best mechanical materials while remaining an intrinsically piezoelectric platform with strong electromechanical coupling.
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All authors Oliver A. Hitchcock, Matthew P. Maksymowych, Kaveh Pezeshki, Takuma Makihara, Erik Szakiel, Chou-Wei Kiang, Daniel Rugar, Amir H. Safavi-Naeini
Quantum Physics
On linearity or non-linearity in machine learning for quantum chaotic dynamics
Francesco Perciavalle, Agostino Gallo, Francesco Plastina et al. (+3 more)
Accurately simulating chaotic
quantum many-body dynamics remains a major computational challenge for classical methods, due to the rapid buildup and spatial spreading of
entanglement during the
evolution. This raises the question of whether machine learning can provide an effective alternative for predicting
quantum dynamics. We address this question by formulating
quantum dynamics as a time-series forecasting problem, using a few-
qubit PXP chain, realizable with Rydberg-atom arrays, as a
benchmark. By varying the initial state, the system spans dynamical regimes ranging from ergodic behavior to
quantum many-body scarring, providing a controlled setting for testing forecasting models across qualitatively different dynamics. We compare two contrasting architectures: an expressive nonlinear
Transformer and DLinear, a simple linear forecasting model. The
Transformer accurately predicts dynamics in the more ergodic regime, but its performance progressively deteriorates as the initial state approaches the scarred limit. In contrast, DLinear remains accurate across the entire family of initial states, with its main deviations consisting of small high-frequency oscillations that have little effect on the overall prediction error. Remarkably, these results show that observables generated by complex
quantum many-body dynamics can be forecast with high accuracy through a simple linear mapping from past to future observations. This reveals that the complexity of the underlying
quantum evolution need not translate into an equally complex forecasting problem.
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All authors Francesco Perciavalle, Agostino Gallo, Francesco Plastina, Gianluigi Greco, Nicola Lo Gullo, Carlo Adornetto
Quantum Physics
Quantum non-Markovian response spectra
Aaron Sander, John F. Kam, Gauthameshwar S. et al. (+2 more)
Quantum systems are rarely isolated from their surroundings. These hidden environments can retain information and return it later, producing correlated errors in
quantum computers and complicating the interpretation of experiments. On a
quantum processor, for example, one job can therefore leave an environmental trace that affects the next, even after the
qubits themselves have been reset. Learning how this hidden influence persists and affects later behavior is therefore important, but the environment is often impossible to measure directly, and fully reconstructing its effects through
tomography rapidly becomes impractical. Here, we introduce a response
matrix that uses controlled interventions and observations of the system alone to reveal the temporal structure of environmental
memory. The
matrix records how future observations change across different controlled histories. Its spectrum characterizes how
memory is structured and how it persists under specified system resets, while suitable linear combinations of its entries can rule out specified classical models of that
memory. Because its history-future queries can be evaluated independently, numerical response
matrices can be assembled in parallel. We establish the framework theoretically, characterize response spectra in an interacting
spin process, and certify
quantum memory in a two-
qubit benchmark. This approach turns system observations into a probe of inaccessible environments and could support the diagnosis of correlated noise, tests of open system models, and
memory-aware control design.
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All authors Aaron Sander, John F. Kam, Gauthameshwar S., Robert Wille, Kavan Modi
Quantum Physics · Cross-listed from cond-mat.str-el
Spin Chain with Continuous Exponential Symmetry: Topological Phase and Beyond
Biao Lian and Zhen Bi
We study symmetric gapped ground states of one-dimensional
spin $S$ chains with a continuous exponential
symmetry $U(1)\rtimes\mathbb Z_2$ with integer base $q$, where the U(1) charge has a modulated unit of charge $q^{L-j}$ decaying exponentially with site $j$. The simplest model is a
quantum breakdown model that can be viewed as a $q$-deformation of the XXZ Haldane
spin chain. We show that the
topology of their symmetric ground states crucially depends on $S$ and $q$. For integer $S$, odd $q$ allows a nontrivial $\mathbb Z_2$ Haldane-type
symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phase with protected edge modes, while even $q$ allows no nontrivial SPT phase. For half-odd integer $S$, odd $q$ prohibits any unique symmetric gapped ground state due to a Lieb-Schultz-Mattis obstruction, whereas even $q$ enforces a novel symmetric gapped phase which we name as the “half-SPT" phase. Unconventionally, the half-SPT phase only has a
symmetry protected edge mode on one edge, and has half of the string orders of an SPT phase. Our results uncover a new type of
symmetry-protected gapped phases beyond existing classification schemes.
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Quantum Physics
Efficient Estimation of Logical Sensitivities Through Fault-Counting
Winston Fu, J. Wilson Staples and Jeff D. Thompson
Quantum error-correcting
circuits are affected by multiple physical noise mechanisms, whose contributions to logical failure must be understood to evaluate code performance and guide improvements in hardware. The individual error budget contributions for an error type $i$ can be characterized by its logical sensitivity $\nu_i = \frac{\partial p_L}{\partial p_i}$, which measures the response of the logical error rate $p_L$ to each physical noise parameter $p_i$. Normally, $\nu_i$ is measured using linear fits such as finite differences, where $p_L$ is measured at two or more values of $p_i$ to calculate partial derivatives. In this paper, we develop a differentiable
estimator to obtain all components of $\nabla_{\mathbf p}p_L$ simultaneously from a single Monte Carlo data set at one noise configuration, using information about the underlying fault configurations. In surface code simulations with
circuit-level noise, the
estimator agrees with conventional finite differences while requiring one to two orders of magnitude fewer shots to achieve the same variance. We apply this technique to quantify error budgets, resolve sensitivities at the individual
qubit level, and infer effective code distance. Finally, we incorporate the sensitivities into Newton root finding to locate and trace threshold contours in multidimensional noise models. These results provide an efficient method for extracting and applying logical sensitivity information from standard
quantum error correction simulations.
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Quantum Physics · Cross-listed from hep-th
Black hole radial geometry from a quantum spin chain
Boris A. Khanikati
We show that the radial differential equation for a scalar field in an anti-de Sitter black brane background can be encoded in an exactly solvable semi-infinite
spin chain independent of dimensionality. The radial coordinate emerges as
lattice quasimomentum.
Spin coherence encodes the geometry, while the spectrum and response recover gravitational observables and yield exact screening-mass sum rules. We implement the finite chain on a superconducting processor. At finite filling and low energies, the model yields a conformal field theory in a coordinate proportional to proper radial distance.
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Quantum Physics
Standard estimators cannot represent fault-tolerant workloads at measured error rates: evaluated, evidence-based uncertainty for quantum resource estimation
Furqan Nasir and Sher Jeel Ahmad
Estimates of the
quantum resources needed to run fault-tolerant
algorithms are almost always reported as single numbers, even though they rest on uncertain hardware parameters and on cost models that disagree. We present an open, tool-agnostic framework that propagates evidence-based priors over fault-tolerant hardware parameters through five surface-code cost models, adds correlated-input sensitivity analysis, and evaluates the resulting intervals with a pre-registered three-layer protocol. Applied to RSA-2048, ECC-256, AES-256, and a Hubbard-model simulation on a superconducting surface-code architecture, it produces three coupled findings that together undermine the single-number convention. Propagating the error rates hardware has actually demonstrated, whose median across five large-array devices is about 4 x 10^-3 rather than the conventional 10^-3, widens the 90% physical-
qubit interval to roughly forty times and lifts its median about 4.6 times above the conventional point estimate. Against the same inputs, five independently structured cost models, including two third-party
estimators (the Azure
Quantum Resource
Estimator and Qualtran) that agree with each other to within about ten percent, disagree by a stable factor of two, a structural uncertainty that no single tool reveals. Most consequentially, both third-party
estimators exceed their representable envelope for 80 to 100 percent of the evidence-based parameter space, and the AES-256 gate count overflows one tool's counter outright, so these workloads cannot be represented at measured error rates at all. The optimistic convention conceals every one of these effects. The uncertainty machinery we use is standard. The contribution is its evidence-based application, the pre-registered evaluation, and the finding that standard tools break down precisely where hardware operates.
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Quantum Physics
Optimized discrete Wigner representations and non-stabilizerness in qubit systems
A.B. Klimov, C. Muñoz and I. Sainz
The apparent absence of a stabilizer-specific phase-space description for
qubit systems is not fundamental, but arises from fixing a state-independent discrete Wigner map. Allowing the phase-space representation to adapt to the state through a simple optimization procedure, we prove that every
qubit stabilizer state admits an exact delta-function discrete Wigner representation for any fixed phase-space partition. This optimization can be implemented directly at the level of measurement statistics by selecting maximal probabilities across mutually unbiased bases forming the partition. This construction naturally leads to a non-stabilizer witness defined by the optimized value of the Wigner function at the origin. Stabilizer states saturate the universal lower bound of this witness for pure states, whereas a value strictly larger than the bound certifies non-stabilizerness. Although the witness is not a finite-size resource monotone, it becomes sharply concentrated and effectively invariant under random Clifford transformations in the large-
qubit limit, suggesting an asymptotically linear growth law for broad families of non-stabilizer states. Our results restore a meaningful
geometric phase-space characterization of
qubit stabilizer structure and provide an operational diagnostic of non-stabilizerness.
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Quantum Physics
Dynamically protected erasure qubit via low-frequency charge driving
Ahmed Hajr, Ke Wang, Bingcheng Qing et al. (+6 more)
Dynamical protection via strong driving can enable resilient
quantum processing on imperfect physical hardware. However, the practical utility of such schemes is frequently limited by parasitic processes such as drive-induced dephasing and leakage. Here, we demonstrate that sub-GHz charge driving of superconducting Kerr oscillators (KOs) in the transmon regime circumvents this trade-off, simultaneously activating fast parametric interactions and protecting the encoded
qubit from low-frequency noise. The key is the frequency dependence of the charge sensitivity: using the AC Stark shift as a probe, we find that the KO frequency sensitivity to a charge drive grows quadratically with both drive frequency and amplitude, making the oscillator weakly sensitive to $1/f$ charge noise yet strongly coupled to drives near 1~GHz. Exploiting this, we first demonstrate cooling and reset of the KO in 82~ns, to a residual population below $0.7\%$—lower than its $2.5\%$ steady-state thermal population. Next, using two KOs, we demonstrate logical control and dynamical protection of a dual-rail
qubit with nearly fourfold erasure bias. Finally, using a single end-of-
circuit erasure check, we achieve an error per Clifford of $5.6\times10^{-4}$, which falls to $1.5\times10^{-4}$ after post-selection, with 25~ns gates.
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All authors Ahmed Hajr, Ke Wang, Bingcheng Qing, Akel Hashim, Bibek Bhandari, Dominic Briseño-Colunga, Justin Dressel, Andrew N. Jordan, Irfan Siddiqi
Quantum Physics
Design-Time Conformance Checking for Pulse-Level Quantum Control
Rylan Malarchick
A pulse-level
quantum control program is written against a device whose limits are recorded, if at all, in vendor documentation and source code. A program that exceeds them can be refused at compile time. It can also be accepted and silently altered, or compile and then fail at the board. In the last two cases the experiment runs, and the data does not correspond to the program that was written. We present qconform, a checker that decides whether a pulse program is realizable on a device, given a versioned capability descriptor for that device. Every constraint in a descriptor cites the toolchain observation that established it. The checker is design-time, offline, and deterministic, and it uses no floating point. It reports a verdict, the rules it applied, and a coverage manifest that names what it did not check. We evaluate qconform by differential testing against the QICK and Qblox toolchains, on three QICK board configurations and one Qblox cluster. Over 1263 program runs of 969 distinct programs, the checker accepted no program that a toolchain refuses. On both vendors, a descriptor pinned to one toolchain release accepts programs that older releases refuse. The evaluation also found ten defects in the checker and its descriptors, all fixed.
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Quantum Physics
CV-QKD with noisy coherent states and realistic displacement receivers
L. F. Melo, J. J. Lacerda, John A. Mora Rodríguez et al. (+1 more)
Near-optimal binary coherent state discrimination can be achieved by performing a displacement operation followed by
photon detection. This displacement serves as a control parameter that can be tuned to optimize a chosen figure of merit, which makes such receivers attractive beyond state discrimination. Here, we turn this discrimination strategy into a complete continuous-variable
quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) protocol based on a binary alphabet of noisy coherent states (displaced thermal states) and displacement receivers. We develop a strategy for estimating the channel parameters with the same displacement receiver, since standard quadrature-based methods do not apply. While a key map can be obtained with on/off detection, we demonstrate that reliable parameter estimation requires
photon-number-resolving detection with sufficient resolution. Finite detector resolution underestimates the observed noise and constitutes a potential security loophole, which we quantify and show to be mitigable with modest resolution. We analyze the protocol's security against entangling-cloner collective attacks in the asymptotic regime, for both direct and reverse reconciliation, and show that it can generate secret keys even under noisy state preparation and imperfect detection. Interestingly, we find that the displacement that minimizes the discrimination error probability also performs well for key generation, thus providing a useful and analytically tractable tuning strategy for the CV-QKD receiver. We evaluate the protocol's performance over a range of transmittances and noise parameters, showing that the displacement receiver can outperform conventional homodyne detection in experimentally relevant regimes. Together, our results point to displacement receivers as a promising alternative for CV-QKD implementations.
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All authors L. F. Melo, J. J. Lacerda, John A. Mora Rodríguez, Alexandre B. Tacla
Quantum Physics
Quantum simulation of the Heisenberg XXZ model on a Rydberg atom array
Matthias Werner and Artur García-Sáez
A major application of analog
quantum hardware is
quantum simulation, where a system evolves over time according to a given
Hamiltonian. One challenge when implementing the
Hamiltonian on a programmable
quantum simulator is the availability of distinct coupling types, many of which go beyond the conventional ZZ-couplings found in Ising
Hamiltonians that are naturally implemented by various platforms. In prior work, we have developed a method based on domain wall encoding to simulate one-dimensional
spin chains using only Ising
Hamiltonians, which would otherwise require XX+YY-couplings as well. Here, we implement the method on a commercially accessible Rydberg atom
quantum device, and simulate the time
evolution of the Heisenberg XXZ model with various anisotropies. We successfully probe the XY and Ising phases of the model and reproduce the qualitative behavior of several one- and two-body observables in both phases, as well as at the critical point. Our work augments the toolbox to simulate canonical
quantum many-body systems on analog
quantum simulators.
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Quantum Physics
Measurement-Efficient Differentiable Quantum Architecture Search for Combinatorial Optimization
Lukas Theißinger, Thore Gerlach and Christian Bauckhage
Differentiable
quantum architecture search (DQAS) is a promising framework for the automated design of
quantum circuits, particularly for variational
quantum optimization
algorithms. However, its practical deployment on
quantum hardware is limited by the large number of
circuit measurements required during optimization, making hardware execution costly. In this work, we show that for a broad class of combinatorial optimization problems and commonly used rotational gate parameterizations, the measurement cost of DQAS can be significantly reduced without changing the optimization objective. We derive the proposed measurement reduction scheme theoretically and validate it experimentally on 3-SAT and MaxCut
benchmark problems. Our approach reduces the requested gradient measurement cost by about 39 to 41% while introducing only negligible classical post-processing overhead, lowering the practical cost of executing DQAS on
quantum hardware.
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Quantum Physics
Binary Optimization of Measurement Groupings for Quantum Energy Estimation
Isaac L. Huidobro-Meezs and Rodrigo A. Vargas-Hernández
Repeated measurements can dominate the resources required for
quantum energy estimation, making the choice of which Pauli observables to measure together a central optimization problem for variational
quantum algorithms. We formulate fully commuting measurement grouping as a classical binary optimization problem based on clique selection and construct non-overlapping groups using mixed-integer linear programming (MILP). For a
benchmark of molecular
Hamiltonians, groupings optimized with approximate covariances reduce the non-overlapping measurement requirement $\varepsilon^2M$ by $51.8\%$ on average relative to sorted insertion (SI). Using the MILP groups to initialize iterative coefficient splitting (ICS), denoted MILP-ICS, yields an average $24.3\%$ reduction relative to ICS initialized from SI (SI-ICS). The optimized groups also transfer across nearby molecular geometries while preserving substantial measurement savings. We further introduce O-clique, which directly optimizes overlapping commuting supports through candidate-clique selection and coefficient profiles. Although O-clique provides only modest additional reductions beyond MILP-ICS, it reduces the measurement requirement by $27.3\%$ on average relative to SI-ICS with 100 iterations, despite using only five final coefficient refinement iterations, indicating improved support quality. Finally, we extend the comparison to Fermi–Hubbard, Kitaev–Heisenberg–$\Gamma$, and XYZ
lattice Hamiltonians, where MILP-based groupings substantially outperform the corresponding SI-based strategies. Together, these results show that variance-informed optimization of measurement-group structure can substantially reduce sampling costs across molecular and
lattice Hamiltonians, with optimized non-overlapping groups providing strong, transferable initializations and direct overlapping optimization offering further gains.
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Quantum Physics · Cross-listed from cs.LG
Physics-Aligned Electronic Ground-State Learning Improves Generalization
Eike S. Eberhard, Xaver Kainz, Viktor Kotsev et al. (+2 more)
Machine-learned interatomic potentials (MLIPs) excel at in-distribution tasks, accelerating drug and material development, yet they struggle to generalize out-of-distribution. We propose to push the cost-accuracy Pareto frontier by designing observable-agnostic electronic ground-state descriptor models (GSMs) with computational costs situated between MLIPs and Kohn-Sham density functional theory (KS-DFT). We align the learning objectives and architectures of GSMs with the governing equations of KS-DFT by enforcing physical constraints and removing optimization pressure on unphysical or irrelevant degrees of freedom. In our size-extrapolation experiments from QM9 to QM40, our combined contributions OrthoNormal-Loss (ON-Loss) and Grassmann Restricted Occupied-Orbital Training (GROOT) reach a 79.1% energy and 83.4% force mean absolute error (MAE) reduction over previous state-of-the-art density GSMs. For
Hamiltonian GSMs, ON-Loss and Residual Optimal-gauge Conditioning-aware KS-Eq. Training (ROCKET) together reduce the energy and force MAEs of the strongest baseline by 99.8% and 95.9%, respectively. Using a self-consistency rejection criterion, we filter out extrapolation errors on QMugs, rejecting fewer than 0.4% of predictions while reaching an energy MAE of 0.07 mHa. Finally, we demonstrate the efficiency of label-free self-consistency fine-tuning, and transfer GSMs to reactive chemistry in Transition1x, reaching energy errors below chemical accuracy.
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All authors Eike S. Eberhard, Xaver Kainz, Viktor Kotsev, Abdulrahman Aldossary, Stephan Günnemann
Quantum Physics · Cross-listed from physics.optics
Sub-shot-noise mid-infrared photothermal measurements using twin beams
Kazuki Hashimoto and Takuro Ideguchi
Mid-infrared photothermal (MIP) measurement probes refractive-index changes induced by mid-infrared (MIR) absorption using visible or near-infrared light and has recently emerged as a powerful modality for MIR spectro-imaging in the life sciences. Reducing measurement noise allows the probe power to be lowered without compromising the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), thereby mitigating the risk of sample damage. However, even in the absence of classical noise, the SNR of conventional MIP measurements using a classical coherent probe is fundamentally limited by shot noise. Here, we demonstrate sub-shot-noise MIP measurement using twin beams generated through seeded optical parametric amplification. Balanced detection of the twin beams suppresses the noise by more than 5 dB below the shot-noise level established using a coherent beam. As a proof-of-principle demonstration, we measure the MIP signal from
liquid water using balanced twin-beam detection and achieve an SNR enhancement of more than 2 dB over the balanced coherent-beam detection.
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Quantum Physics · Cross-listed from cond-mat.stat-mech
Gaussian Scrooge Ensemble from Deep Thermalization in Free-Fermions
Angelo Russotto, Katja Klobas, Pasquale Calabrese et al. (+1 more)
Deep thermalization indicates the emergence of universal ensembles of pure states in a subsystem after measuring its environment. We investigate this phenomenon in a free-
fermion chain using local measurements that preserve Gaussianity and break particle-number conservation. Although the measurement outcomes provide partial information about local conserved charges within a finite subsystem, we argue that this information becomes negligible in the thermodynamic limit. This effective non-revelation underlies the emergence of a fermionic Gaussian Scrooge ensemble, determined by the subsystem's generalized Gibbs ensemble. We construct this universal ensemble directly at the subsystem level and provide numerical evidence that it describes the late-time projected ensemble at finite temperature. Our results extend the description of thermalization in non-interacting integrable systems beyond the reduced density
matrix to universal statistics of conditional pure states.
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All authors Angelo Russotto, Katja Klobas, Pasquale Calabrese, Bruno Bertini
Quantum Physics
Numerically exact simulation of open quantum networks with strong system-bath couplings using tensor network path integrals
Quentin W. Richter and Moritz Cygorek
Non-Markovian open
quantum networks are among the most challenging problems in
quantum theory, as they suffer from both, the exponentially scaling many-body state space as well as long
memory times when the sites are strongly coupled to structured environments. Recent efforts to address them by combining tensor networks with real-time path integrals, such as TEMPO and process tensors, were however limited to systems with rather weak system-environment couplings because strong couplings lead to large bond dimensions. Here, we devise a tensor network scheme (CTEMPO) resulting in particularly small bond dimensions for single-site problems. We then extend this to a practical scheme to simulate non-Markovian
quantum networks by time-evolving a corresponding comb tensor network. Benchmarking the single-site
algorithm on the
spin-
boson model we find orders-of-magnitude improvement over established methods. The multi-site
algorithm is shown to solve the notoriously difficult problem of the 7-site Fenna-Matthews-Olson photosynthetic complex, whose spectral density contains 62 peaks. We then apply our approach to explore the scaling behavior of the superradiance of up to $N=20$
quantum dots individually coupled to super-Ohmic
phonon baths. Our approach provides a turnkey solution to non-Markovian
quantum networks and is compatible with more general tensor network
topologies.
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Quantum Physics · Cross-listed from cs.SE
QuSema: Detecting Silent Bugs in Quantum Libraries via Quantum-knowledge-enhanced Agents
Yujin Song, Kaining Zhang, Qixin Zhang et al. (+3 more)
Quantum libraries are now critical infrastructure for
quantum algorithm development, yet their correctness remains difficult to test. Existing testing techniques mainly rely on failure-based or comparison-based oracles, exposing bugs only when executions fail, violate runtime checks, or disagree with another implementation. Their applicability is limited when suitable execution-based oracles are unavailable, leaving some silent bugs undetected. Such missed bugs can produce incorrect results that propagate into experimental conclusions, simulation studies, and algorithmic designs. Here we present QuSema, an autonomous testing
agent for finding silent bugs in
quantum libraries. QuSema uses constraints from
quantum semantics and documentation as a source-level semantic oracle to assess whether implementation logic can produce invalid outputs from valid inputs. It operates through an agentic loop that repeatedly inspects library API documentation and source code, reasons about the intended behavior of
quantum operations, identifies potential semantic deviations, and validates them by generating executable tests through library APIs. Guided by
quantum-domain
reasoning, QuSema turns high-level behavioral mismatches into concrete, user-triggerable bug reports, enabling it to uncover non-crash defects. We implement QuSema for Qiskit and PennyLane. On a
benchmark of 20 historical silent bugs, QuSema achieves higher mean bug relocation counts than Claude Code and Codex, with the DeepSeek configuration costing less than Claude Code. QuSema also discovers 40 previously unknown bugs confirmed by the developers, including 30 silent bugs.
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All authors Yujin Song, Kaining Zhang, Qixin Zhang, Shuai Wang, Pingchuan Ma, Yuxuan Du
Quantum Physics
Benchmarking Modular Optimization Strategies for Parameterized Quantum Circuits
Carla Cotea, Stefan Balauca and Andreea Arusoaie
Training parameterized
quantum circuits requires balancing optimization progress with limited evaluation budgets and the statistical uncertainty of near-term
quantum hardware. We present a modular benchmarking framework that separates
quantum search-direction estimation from classical parameter-update rules, allowing their interactions and sensitivities to be examined independently. We evaluate a suite of gradient-based,
stochastic, and derivative-free optimizers across combinatorial optimization using the
Quantum Approximate Optimization
Algorithm (QAOA), supervised
quantum machine learning using Iris classification and a
quantum convolutional neural network (QCNN) for binary MNIST classification, and
quantum chemistry using the variational
quantum eigensolver (VQE) for molecular hydrogen. By separating objective evaluations from sample-
circuit costs under finite-shot simulation and physical execution on a 156-
qubit processor, we compare optimizer behavior across workloads with different parameter counts and measurement requirements. Four selected simulator and hardware case studies report terminal and best observed objectives separately, alongside post-training classifier accuracies. The comparisons include selected MaxCut and hydrogen trajectories and illustrate workload-dependent objective changes and evaluation costs, while the simulator
benchmark compares both peak and mean performance across three seeds. The hardware runs do not establish an optimizer ranking or isolate a causal effect of device noise.
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Quantum Physics
An Explicit Counterexample to Tsirelson's Problem via a Linear System Game
Minbo Gao, Tianshi Yu and Lihong Zhi
We construct an explicit binary linear system game that separates $C_{qa}$, the closure of the set of finite dimensional
quantum correlations, from $C_{qc}$, the set of commuting operator correlations. The game admits a perfect commuting operator strategy, while every correlation in $C_{qa}$ has a success probability strictly less than 1. This provides a concrete counterexample to Tsirelson's problem in its approximation form. The defining system has 1417152 equations in 1889684 variables, with exactly three nonzero coefficients per equation and a single nonzero entry on the right hand side. We also compute the classical value exactly. The complete system is specified in Lean 4, and the separation and exact classical value are formalized using Mathlib.
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Quantum Physics · Cross-listed from cs.LG
ProtocolMatch: Protocol-Dependent Model Selection for Scientific Dynamics Forecasting
Lu Wei, Yufeng Wang and Haibin Ling
Scientific dynamics forecasting is often framed as an architecture choice, although deployment is also determined by observed history, rollout feedback, compute budget, physical objective, and test distribution. We formulate protocol-dependent model selection and introduce ProtocolMatch, a compute-matched, validation-selected, and failure-preserving evaluation framework. On driven
quantum-
spin dynamics, we compare recurrent, patched-
attention, causal-
attention, and low-rank linear predictors across three independently generated
datasets. The causal-
attention–recurrence ordering reverses as the training set grows within a fixed two-
spin task, while a linear predictor has the lowest mean error in the six-
spin local-observable comparison. Restricting observed history worsens every refreshed-history view but improves every closed-loop view in the four-
spin study. A latest-state MLP has lower error than persistence on every
dataset under state refresh across all five
cells, yet its closed-loop rank varies by system and includes finite explosive errors. Physical penalties improve targeted consistency without reliably improving prediction error, and in-distribution intervals lose most coverage after a driving-frequency shift. Thus scientific model selection should return a predictor with its protocol and report accuracy, physical validity, and shifted-distribution reliability separately.
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Quantum Physics
Dynamics of Work Extraction in Multipartite Atomic Systems: Role of Correlations and Relative Entropy
M. Ibrahim, S. J. Anwar and K. Khan
We investigate the dynamics of
quantum ergotropy in a multipartite system of two-level atoms interacting with a quantized field. The role of multipartite
quantum mutual information and
quantum relative
entropy is analyzed to understand how correlations and the distinguishability between the passive state and the product of local states affect the extractable work. Numerical results for systems containing two to five atoms show that the maximum ergotropy does not increase linearly with the system size, while the intervals of zero ergotropy are gradually modified and suppressed for larger systems. We also study the effect of the average thermal
photon number and different initial atomic states. Increasing the thermal
photon number mainly reduces the relative-
entropy contribution, whereas the initial state strongly influences both the magnitude and persistence of ergotropy. Among the considered states, the partially entangled state provides the largest and more persistent extractable work, while the mixed GHZ state gives the smallest ergotropy. These results highlight the importance of multipartite correlations, thermal effects, and state preparation in controlling
quantum work extraction and may be useful for future studies of
quantum batteries and
quantum power.
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Quantum Physics
Engineering of Chirped Apodized Sources for Quantum Spectroscopy
Linda Sansoni, Max Widarsson, Patrick Mutter et al. (+1 more)
Quantum sources of light are of paramount importance for the development of photonic
quantum technologies. The growing demand for bright, efficient, and spectrally engineered photonic sources for applications in
quantum sensing, spectroscopy, and imaging has motivated the development of tailored nonlinear
crystals. Here, we report on the development and characterization of chirped, apodized KTP
crystals specifically engineered for
quantum spectroscopy. Our source exhibits an unprecedented bandwidth in a highly non-degenerate configuration, demonstrating its potential to support
quantum spectroscopy protocols over broad spectral ranges while enabling significantly shorter measurement times.
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All authors Linda Sansoni, Max Widarsson, Patrick Mutter, Andrea Chiuri
Quantum Physics · Cross-listed from cs.CR
Collusion-Secure Semi-Quantum Secret Sharing Scheme using a Quantum Third Party
Santanu Majhi and Nirupam Basak
The security of a secret sharing protocol is compromised if one or more dishonest participants can reconstruct the secret by deviating from the prescribed protocol, particularly when such malicious behavior remains undetected. Semi-
Quantum Secret Sharing (SQSS) is a variant of secret sharing in which the participants possess only classical capabilities, such as preparing and measuring
qubits in the computational ($Z$) basis, while a
quantum-capable third party assists the dealer in generating and distributing
quantum shares of a classical secret. The limited
quantum capabilities of the participants in SQSS protocols may introduce vulnerabilities to collusion attacks, enabling an assisting
quantum third party, in collaboration with a dishonest classical participant, to jointly recover the secret even without detection. In this work, we propose a novel SQSS protocol that eliminates this vulnerability and achieves information-theoretic security against collusion attacks. We further prove that the proposed protocol is secure against a broad class of external and internal attacks. Finally, a comparative analysis demonstrates that our construction advances existing SQSS protocols by simultaneously optimizing
qubit efficiency, involves a classical dealer, and resilience against DCNA attacks using basic Bell states.
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Quantum Physics
Inequivalent Quantum Resources from Multipartite State Discrimination
Srijani Das, Tuhin Paul, Manasi Patra et al. (+2 more)
Any two orthogonal
quantum states can be perfectly distinguished via local operations and classical communication (LOCC), yet whether all orthogonal multipartite pairs incur an identical operational cost remains an open question. Here, we address the resource consumption required for local state discrimination across multipartite pair of states. We demonstrate that distinct pairs of orthogonal multipartite maximally entangled states require unequal amounts of
quantum resources to achieve local distinguishability. Extending our framework beyond individual pairs, we analyze larger sets of both locally distinguishable and indistinguishable multipartite orthogonal states, revealing a nontrivial hierarchy in their
entanglement consumption. These results show that the resource cost of LOCC discrimination is state-dependent, providing insight into the fine-grained structure of multipartite nonlocality.
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All authors Srijani Das, Tuhin Paul, Manasi Patra, Atanu Bhunia, Ramij Rahaman
Quantum Physics
Characterizing Fermionic Non-Gaussianity in the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev Model via Replica Twist Entropy
Ning Sun and Pengfei Zhang
Understanding the non-
equilibrium dynamics of
quantum many-body systems plays a central role in modern many-body physics. Intriguing insights emerge from investigating how
quantum resources, which are essential for achieving unambiguous quantumness, are generated and spread under chaotic
quantum dynamics. In fermionic systems, non-Gaussianity constitutes an important resource beyond
entanglement, characterizing the deviation of generic
quantum states from free-
fermion states. In this Letter, we propose using the replica twist
entropy, defined through the expectation value of a replica rotation operator with a tunable angle $\alpha$, as a natural probe of non-Gaussianity in pure fermionic states. After deriving its behavior for typical many-body states, we establish a general framework for analyzing the replica twist
entropy in solvable Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models in the large-$N$ limit. Applying this framework to the dynamics of the thermofield double state, we uncover a novel dynamical phase diagram in the parameter space of $\alpha$ and
evolution time $t$, exhibiting spontaneous $Z_2$
symmetry breaking at $\alpha=\pi/4$ and universal cusps as a function of $\alpha$ in the long-time regime. Our results pave the way for studying non-Gaussianity in strongly correlated fermionic systems and reveal a new class of dynamical transitions probed by non-Gaussianity.
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