Quantum Simulation Seminar Series: "Simulating physical models on a trapped-ion quantum computer"

ABSTRACT
We present a quantum computer comprised of a chain of 171Yb+ ions with individual Raman beam addressing and individual readout [1]. This fully connected system can be configured to run any sequence of single- and two-qubit gates, making it in effect an arbitrarily programmable machine.
We use this versatile setup to realize various quantum algorithms, such as the digital simulation of a small Schwinger model system. We also add a classical optimization layer to our quantum computing stack to create a quantum-classical hybrid machine [2].  This allows us to implement variational optimization methods, such as the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). Recent results from these efforts, including the creation of so-called thermofield doubles [3], and concepts for scaling up the architecture will be discussed.
[1] S. Debnath et al., Nature 563:63 (2016), [2] D. Zhu et al., Science Advances 5, 10 (2019), [3] D. Zhu et al., arXiv:1906.02699 (2019)