A Theorist’s Quantum Simulations with Rydberg Atom Arrays

Title: A Theorist’s Quantum Simulations with Rydberg Atom Arrays Date: August 15 2026 Noon - 14:00 EDT Abstract: Unprecedented control of light-atom interactions presents a unique opportunity to physicists to prepare fundamentally interesting and technologically useful quantum states of matter. I will highlight two recent quantum simulations that we performed on remotely accessible Rydberg atom array of QuEra Computing. In the first one [1], we experimentally investigate the far from equilibrium physics of transverse-field Ising model, a prototypical model in statistical mechanics, and uncover significant deviations from the theoretical predictions. We theoretically traced this discrepancy to atom motion which acts as an emergent disorder in Rydberg atom arrays and elucidated our observations with a minimal random spin model. In the second quantum simulation [2], we prepared a multi-partite entangled state known as W state in quantum information science by employing quantum many-body physics of topological ring frustration. To demonstrate quantum coherence and entanglement in the experimentally prepared state, we developed a Bayesian state tomography protocol and bounded the measured state fidelity. These works show that, as NISQ technologies advance, the gap between theory and experiment in quantum simulation is narrowing, ushering in an era where quantum simulation is becoming an essential tool in the theorist’s toolbox. Reference: [1] Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 250403 (2025) https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/jr7l-2cfb [2] arXiv:2510.17974 https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.17974 Speaker: Dr. Ceren Dag is an assistant professor of the physics department in Indiana University, Bloomington. She earned her Ph.D. in Physics from University of Michigan Ann Arbor in 2021. She was a ITAMP postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. Her publications can be found at https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gAKYr8sAAAAJ&hl=en