Simulating Black Hole Thermality and Interior Scrambling on a Superconducting Quantum Processor

Quantum Physics arXiv:2608.19318 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 19 Aug 2026] Title:Simulating Black Hole Thermality and Interior Scrambling on a Superconducting Quantum Processor Authors:Ryan Smith, Ewan Forbes, Iason Sofos Andrew Hallam, Jiannis Pachos View a PDF of the paper titled Simulating Black Hole Thermality and Interior Scrambling on a Superconducting Quantum Processor, by Ryan Smith and 3 other authors View PDF Abstract:We implement a chiral spin-chain black hole simulator on IBM superconducting quantum hardware and probe, within a common microscopic framework, both semiclassical horizon physics and interacting quantum scrambling. We first measure the dispersion relation across the exterior, horizon and over-tilted interior regimes, reproducing the predicted evolution of the effective light-cone structure. To probe Hawking thermality, we prepare a localised excitation inside the horizon and monitor its density response at an exterior site, observing the predicted inverse relation between the peak arrival time and the surface gravity, thereby establishing a calibrated dynamical estimator of the Hawking temperature. Beyond the semiclassical regime, we continuously tune the interactions and distinguish non-exponential operator spreading in the free-fermion limit from Lyapunov-like OTOC decay in the strongly interacting chiral regime. These measurements use observable-specific Floquet circuits derived from the same parent chiral model, including its mean-field and coordinate-equivalent XY descriptions, to reduce circuit depth while preserving the physics relevant to each probe. Our results provide a unified programmable platform for studying horizon geometry, Hawking thermality and interacting scrambling on quantum hardware. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) Cite as: arXiv:2608.19318 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2608.19318v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.19318 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Ryan Smith [view email] [v1] Wed, 19 Aug 2026 18:00:02 UTC (993 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Simulating Black Hole Thermality and Interior Scrambling on a Superconducting Quantum Processor, by Ryan Smith and 3 other authorsView PDFTeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-08 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.str-el hep-th 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?)