Quantum Simulation and Computation with Individual Atoms

Christopher Monroe

Duke University

Trapped atomic ions are a leading physical platform for large-scale quantum computers and simulators, featuring qubits with nearly perfect replicability, indefinite idle coherence times and the cleanest quantum gate operations. Such atomic clock qubits are controlled with laser beams, allowing densely-connected interactions and reconfigurable universal gate sets and Hamiltonian expression. Trapped ions have been a standard for quantum simulations of interacting spin systems in particular, from the study of phase transitions to quantum thermalization phenomena, using both continuous (Hamiltonian) and discrete (gate) modes. I will present the state-of-the-art in quantum simulations, including the use of multiqubit interactions, the study of measurement-induced phase transitions, and the emergence of topological states of matter.