Stirring the false vacuum via interacting quantized bubbles on a 5,564-qubit quantum annealer
False vacuum decay-the transition from a metastable quantum state to a true vacuum state-plays an important role in quantum field theory and non-equilibrium phenomena such as phase transitions and dynamical metastability. The non-perturbative nature of false vacuum decay and the limited experimental access to this process make it challenging to study, leaving several open questions regarding how true vacuum bubbles form, move and interact. Here we observe quantized bubble formation in real time, a key feature of false vacuum decay dynamics, using a quantum annealer with 5,564 superconducting flux qubits. We develop an effective model that captures both initial bubble creation and subsequent interactions, and remains accurate under dissipation. The annealer reveals coherent scaling laws in the driven many-body dynamics for more than 1,000 intrinsic qubit time units. This work provides a method for investigating false vacuum dynamics of large quantum systems in quantum annealers.
Authors
- Madita Willsch
- Kristel Michielsen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1444-4262)
- Andrew Hallam (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2288-7661)
- Dennis Willsch (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3855-5100)
- Fengping Jin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3476-524X)
- Zlatko Papić (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8451-2235)
- Jaka Vodeb (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6193-3475)
- Jean-Yves Desaules (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3749-6375)
- Andrea Rava
- Gregor Humar
Institutions
- University of Leeds (GB)
- University of Ljubljana (SI)
- Institute of Science and Technology Austria (AT)
- Forschungszentrum Jülich (DE)
- Jožef Stefan Institute (SI)
- Institute of Mathematics, Physics, and Mechanics (SI)
- Stadtwerke Jülich (Germany) (DE)
- RWTH Aachen University (DE)
- FH Aachen (DE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Physics
- Published
- 2025-02-04
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-024-02765-w
- Citations
- 8
- Primary Topic
- Quantum many-body systems
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 9.97
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Leverhulme Trust
- University of Leeds
- European Commission
- Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
- Gauss Centre for Supercomputing
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
- Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara