Observation of dynamical phase transitions in a superconducting quantum processor implementing five stabilizer terms*

The dynamical phase transition (DPT) [1] in many-body systems is of recent interest due to the ability to engineer these non-equilibrium quantum phases in the laboratory.  DPTs are typically defined as non-analytic behavior in the dynamical free energy.   They have also been shown to represent error correction properties when applied to stabilizer codes [2]. Here, we report on results from the d=2 toric code (also known as a surface code) when including 5 stabilizer terms, and executed on the QuTech Quantum Inspire superconducting quantum processor. We observe good agreement between experiment and theory when accounting for experimentally calibrated error sources.

 

[1] M. Heyl et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 135704 (2013).

[2] A. T. Schmitz, arXiv:2002.11733 (2020).