Dartmouth Events

Abstract: We address a central problem in the creation and manipulation of quantum
states: how to build topological quantum spin liquids with physically
accessible interactions. Theorists have been studying models of quantum
spin liquids that rely on “multi-spin” interactions since the 1970s,
and, more recently, have realized that these models can be used for
quantum computing. However, nature does not provide such interactions in
real materials. We construct a lattice gauge model where the required,
fully quantum, multi-spin interactions can in fact be emulated exactly
in any system with only two-body Ising interactions plus a uniform
transverse field. The latter systems do exist, and we provide an
explicit embedding of our model into one such system, the commercially
available D-Wave machine. Therefore, our solution is an alternative path
to building a workable topological quantum computer within existing
hardware. Our bottom-up construction is generalizable to other
gauge-like theories, including those with fractonic topological order
such as the X-cube model. Taken as a whole, our approach is a blueprint
to emulate topologically ordered quantum spin liquids in programmable
quantum machines.