Nadir Samos Sáenz de Buruaga, Rafał Bistroń, Marcin Rudziński, Rodrigo M. C. Pereira, Karol Życzkowski, Pedro Ribeiro

SciPost Phys. 19, 013 (2025) · published 8 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Fidelity decay captures the inevitable state degradation in any practical implementation of a quantum process. We devise bounds for the decay of fidelity for a generic evolution given by a random quantum circuit model that encompasses errors arising from the implementation of two-qubit gates and qubit permutations. We show that fidelity decays exponentially with both circuit depth and the number of qubits raised to an architecture-dependent power and we determine the decay rates as a function of the amplitude of the aforementioned errors. Furthermore, we demonstrate the utility of our results in benchmarking quantum processors using the quantum volume figure of merit and provide insights into strategies for improving processor performance. These findings pave the way for understanding how states evolving under generic quantum dynamics degrade due to the accumulation of different kinds of perturbations.

Weizhen Tang, Yating Zheng, Amir Shee, Guozheng Lin, Zhangang Han, Pawel Romanczuk, Cristián Huepe

SciPost Phys. 19, 012 (2025) · published 8 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We study the emerging collective states in a simple mechanical model of a dense group of self-propelled polar disks with off-centered rotation, confined within a circular arena. Each disk presents self-alignment towards the sum of contact forces acting on it, resulting from disk-substrate interactions, while also displaying mutual alignment with neighbors due to having its center of rotation located a distance $R$ behind its centroid, so that central contact forces can also introduce torques. The effect of both alignment mechanisms produces a variety of collective states that combine high-frequency localized circular oscillations with low-frequency milling around the center of the arena, in fluid or solid regimes. We consider cases with small/large $R$ values, isotropic/anisotropic disk-substrate damping, smooth/rough arena boundaries, different densities, and multiple systems sizes, showing that the emergent collective states that we identify are robust, generic, and potentially observable in real-world natural or artificial systems.

Georges Bouzerar, Maxime Thumin

SciPost Phys. 19, 011 (2025) · published 8 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

One of the great challenges for the large-scale development of quantum technologies is to generate and control the entanglement of quantum bits through interactions of sufficiently long range. Two decades ago, spin chains have been proposed for quantum communication. Unfortunately, couplings are of very short range in general which drastically limits the communication to very short distances. Here, we demonstrate that the presence of flat bands (FBs) can trigger very long-distance magnetic couplings in spin chains. Furthermore, we show that the typical decaying lengthscale is directly related to the quantum metric of the flat band eigenstates. We have validated the robustness of our results in the case where flat bands become weakly dispersive. We believe that our unexpected findings could open up an alternative route to enable long-distance quantum communication.

Joan Triadú-Galí, Artur Garcia-Saez, Bruno Juliá-Díaz, Axel Pérez-Obiol

SciPost Phys. 19, 010 (2025) · published 7 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We investigate the dielectric breakdown of mesoscopic Mott insulators, a phenomenon where a strong electric field destabilizes the insulating state, resulting in a transition to a metallic phase. Using the Landau-Zener formalism, which models the excitation of a two-level system, we derive a theoretical expression for the threshold value of the field. To validate our predictions, we present an efficient protocol for estimating the charge gap and threshold field via non-equilibrium current oscillations, overcoming the computational limitations of exact diagonalization. Our simulations demonstrate the accuracy of our theoretical formula for systems with small gaps. Moreover, our findings are directly testable in ultracold atomic experiments with ring geometries and artificial gauge fields, as our method uses measurable quantities and relies on already available technologies. This work aims to bridge the gap between theoretical models and experimentally realizable protocols, providing tools to explore non-equilibrium mesoscopic phenomena in strongly correlated quantum systems.

Machiko Hatsuda, Ondřej Hulík, William D. Linch, Warren D. Siegel, Di Wang, Yu-Ping Wang

SciPost Phys. 19, 009 (2025) · published 7 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

The $\mathcal{A}$-theory takes U-duality symmetry as a guiding principle, with the SL(5) U-duality symmetry being described as the world-volume theory of a 5-brane. Furthermore, by unifying the 6-dimensional world-volume Lorentz symmetry with the SL(5) spacetime symmetry, it extends to SL(6) U-duality symmetry. The SL(5) spacetime vielbein fields and the 5-brane world-volume vielbein fields are mixed under the SL(6) U-duality transformation. We demonstrate that consistent sectionings of the SL(6) $\mathcal{A}$5-brane world-volume Lagrangian yield Lagrangians of the $\mathcal{T}$-string with O(D,D) T-duality symmetry, the conventional string, the $\mathcal{M}$5-brane with GL(4) duality symmetry, and the non-perturbative M2-brane in supergravity theory. The GL(4) covariant Lagrangian of the $\mathcal{M}$5-brane derived in this manner is a new, perturbatively quantizable theory.