Engineering quantum criticality and dynamics on an analog-digital simulator
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2602.18555 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 20 Feb 2026] Title:Engineering quantum criticality and dynamics on an analog-digital simulator Authors:Alexandra A. Geim, Nazli Ugur Koyluoglu, Simon J. Evered, Rahul Sahay, Sophie H. Li, Muqing Xu, Dolev Bluvstein, Nik O. Gjonbalaj, Nishad Maskara, Marcin Kalinowski, Tom Manovitz, Ruben Verresen, Susanne F. Yelin, Johannes Feldmeier, Markus Greiner, Vladan Vuletic, Mikhail D. Lukin View a PDF of the paper titled Engineering quantum criticality and dynamics on an analog-digital simulator, by Alexandra A. Geim and 16 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Understanding emergent phenomena in out-of-equilibrium interacting many-body systems is an exciting frontier in physical science. While quantum simulators represent a promising approach to this long-standing problem, in practice it can be challenging to directly realize the required interactions, measure arbitrary observables, and mitigate errors. Here we use coherent mapping between the Rydberg and hyperfine qubits in a neutral atom array simulator to engineer and probe complex quantum dynamics. We combine efficient analog dynamics with fully programmable state preparation and measurement, leverage non-destructive readout for loss information and atomic qubit reuse, and use an atom reservoir for replacing lost atoms. With this analog-digital approach, we first demonstrate dynamical engineering of ring-exchange and particle hopping dynamics via Floquet driving and measure the spectral function of single excitations by evolving initial superposition states. Extending these techniques to a 271-site kagome lattice, we employ closed-loop optimization to target an out-of-equilibrium critical quantum spin liquid of the Rokhsar-Kivelson type. We observe the key features of such a state, including the absence of local order, many-body coherences between nearly equal-amplitude dimer configurations over up to 18 sites, and universal correlations consistent with predictions from field theory. Together, these results pave the way for using dynamical control in analog-digital quantum simulators to study complex quantum many-body systems. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2602.18555 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2602.18555v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.18555 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Alexandra Geim [view email] [v1] Fri, 20 Feb 2026 19:00:00 UTC (22,725 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Engineering quantum criticality and dynamics on an analog-digital simulator, by Alexandra A. Geim and 16 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Ancillary-file links: Ancillary files (details): SI_video_caption.docx final_repeated_QSL_movie.mp4 Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-02 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)