Spin Hamiltonians on a hyperbolic lattice

Location: University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Contact person: Dr. Arghavan Safavi-Naini Group website: Hybrid atom-ion Quantum Systems

Description: Spin Hamiltonians are the cornerstone of the description of combinatorial optimization run on quantum computers, of magnetic materials or as fundamental objects in the studies of quantum integrability, chaos and transport. Putting such spin Hamiltonians on a so-called hyperbolic lattice, as suggested by recent experiments using superconducting resonators, would allow for exciting possibilities of studying exotic phases of matter on curved spacetimes with negative curvature (such as the anti-de Sitter spacetime used in the celebrated AdS/CFT correspondence) and recent progress in engineering spin Hamiltonians with arbitrary interactions in trapped ions offers an exciting opening to address these issues experimentally. The project consists of two parts: 1) Identifying through multidimensional optimization the relevant experimental setup to realize hyperbolic spin Hamiltonians. 2) Studying the physics of frustrated spin Hamiltonians on curved spacetimes using both analytical and numerical approaches, such as the path integral quantum Monte-Carlo simulations.

Prerequisite knowledge: quantum physics, affinity with quantum computing and simulation
Internship period and planned duration:Winter/Spring 2022, 4-6 months