Glassy dynamics with softened kinetic constraints on a noisy quantum computer

Quantum Physics arXiv:2608.19335 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 19 Aug 2026] Title:Glassy dynamics with softened kinetic constraints on a noisy quantum computer Authors:Marcel Cech, Igor Lesanovsky, Federico Carollo View a PDF of the paper titled Glassy dynamics with softened kinetic constraints on a noisy quantum computer, by Marcel Cech and 2 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Mid-circuit measurements provide direct access to trajectory-level observables, revealing dynamical structures in many-body systems that are invisible in ensemble-averaged quantities. We exploit this capability to realize and study an instance of the Floquet-East model on a superconducting quantum processor. Here, the combination of mid-circuit measurements, kinetically constrained unitary operations and hardware noise gives rise to intricate many-body phenomena. Analyzing trajectories obtained from temporally and spatially resolved mid-circuit measurements, we identify dynamical heterogeneity --- a hallmark of glassy dynamics. We quantify this emergent behavior by studying the probability of finding inactive space-time regions of a given size. This quantity displays a crossover from an area- to perimeter-dominated scaling, which is a characteristic property of glasses and is associated with the proximity to a dynamical first-order phase transition. Our results establish current noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices as scalable testbeds for investigating correlated many-body phenomena at the level of measurement trajectories. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) Cite as: arXiv:2608.19335 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2608.19335v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.19335 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Marcel Cech [view email] [v1] Wed, 19 Aug 2026 18:00:39 UTC (1,507 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Glassy dynamics with softened kinetic constraints on a noisy quantum computer, by Marcel Cech and 2 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-08 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.stat-mech 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?) 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?)