2020/05/31 by Jad C. Halimeh, R.J. Ott, Robert Ott +3 · 19 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Gauge anomaly #Gauge boson #Gauge fixing #Gauge theory #Hamiltonian lattice gauge theory #Introduction to gauge theory #Lattice gauge theory #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum entanglement #Quantum gauge theory #Quantum many-body systems #Quantum mechanics #Supersymmetric gauge theory #Theoretical physics #Ultracold atom #cond-mat.quant-gas #cond-mat.str-el #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevresearch.2.033361
published in Physical Review Research 2(3) (American Physical Society) · Accepted version. 20 pages, 11 figures. Videos of dynamics at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FCrzldBtz8&list=PLoUsb3eaKix6xYrnNk68Bh3imd3II54gO
arxiv created 2020/08/11 · openalex publication_date 2020/09/03 · arxiv updated 2020/09/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Recent years have seen strong progress in quantum simulation of gauge-theory dynamics using ultracold-atom experiments. A principal challenge in these efforts is the certification of gauge invariance, which has recently been realized [Yang et al., arXiv:2003.08945]. One major but poorly investigated experimental source of gaugeinvariance violation is an imperfect preparation of the initial state. Using the time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group, we analyze the robustness of gauge-invariant dynamics against potential preparation defects in the above ultracold-atom implementation of a U(1) gauge theory. We find defects related to an erroneous initialization of matter fields to be innocuous, as the associated gauge-invariance violation remains strongly localized throughout the time evolution. A defect due to faulty initialization of the gauge field leads to a mild proliferation of the associated violation. Furthermore, we characterize the influence of immobile and mobile defects by monitoring the spread of entanglement entropy. Overall, our results indicate that the aforementioned experimental realization exhibits a high level of fidelity in the gauge invariance of its dynamics at all evolution times. Our work provides strong evidence that ultracold-atom setups can serve as an extremely reliable framework for the quantum simulation of gauge-theory dynamics.