Quantum Volume for Photonic Quantum Processors.

Defining metrics for near-term quantum computing processors has been an integral part of the quantum hardware research and development efforts. Such quantitative characteristics are not only useful for reporting the progress and comparing different quantum platforms but also essential for identifying the bottlenecks and designing a technology road map. Most metrics such as randomized benchmarking and quantum volume were originally introduced for circuit-based quantum computers and were not immediately applicable to measurement-based quantum computing (MBQC) processors such as in photonic devices. In this Letter, we close this long-standing gap by presenting a framework to map physical noises and imperfections in MBQC processes to logical errors in equivalent quantum circuits, whereby enabling the well-known metrics to characterize MBQC. To showcase our framework, we study a continuous-variable cluster state based on the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) encoding as a near-term candidate for photonic quantum computing, and derive the effective logical gate error channels and calculate the quantum volume in terms of the GKP squeezing and photon transmission rate.

Bound Entanglement in Thermalized States and Black Hole Radiation.

We study the mixed-state entanglement structure of chaotic quantum many-body systems at late times using the recently developed equilibrium approximation. A rich entanglement phase diagram emerges when we generalize this technique to evaluate the logarithmic negativity for various universality classes of macroscopically thermalized states. Unlike in the infinite-temperature case, when we impose energy constraints at finite temperature, the phase diagrams for the logarithmic negativity and the mutual information become distinct. In particular, we identify a regime where the negativity is extensive but the mutual information is subextensive, indicating a large amount of bound entanglement. When applied to evaporating black holes, these results imply that there is quantum entanglement within the Hawking radiation long before the Page time, although this entanglement may not be distillable into Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs. We claim that at this earlier time, rather than the Page time, information about diaries thrown into the black hole first starts to leak out.

Quantum-Hall to Insulator Transition in Ultra-Low-Carrier-Density Topological Insulator Films and a Hidden Phase of the Zeroth Landau Level.

A key feature of the topological surface state under a magnetic field is the presence of the zeroth Landau level at the zero energy. Nonetheless, it is challenging to probe the zeroth Landau level due to large electron-hole puddles smearing its energy landscape. Here, by developing ultra-low-carrier density topological insulator Sb2 Te3 films, an extreme quantum limit of the topological surface state is reached and a hidden phase at the zeroth Landau level is uncovered. First, an unexpected quantum-Hall-to-insulator-transition near the zeroth Landau level is discovered. Then, through a detailed scaling analysis, it is found that this quantum-Hall-to-insulator-transition belongs to a new universality class, implying that the insulating phase discovered here has a fundamentally different origin from those in nontopological systems.

Many-Body Topological Invariants for Fermionic Symmetry-Protected Topological Phases.

We define and compute many-body topological invariants of interacting fermionic symmetry-protected topological phases, protected by an orientation-reversing symmetry, such as time-reversal or reflection symmetry. The topological invariants are given by partition functions obtained by a path integral on unoriented spacetime which, as we show, can be computed for a given ground state wave function by considering a nonlocal operation, "partial" reflection or transpose. As an application of our scheme, we study the Z_{8} and Z_{16} classification of topological superconductors in one and three dimensions.

Finite-Size and Composition-Driven Topological Phase Transition in (Bi1-xInx)2Se3 Thin Films.

In a topological insulator (TI), if its spin-orbit coupling (SOC) strength is gradually reduced, the TI eventually transforms into a trivial insulator beyond a critical point of SOC, at which point the bulk gap closes: this is the standard description of the topological phase transition (TPT). However, this description of TPT, driven solely by the SOC (or something equivalent) and followed by closing and reopening of the bulk band gap, is valid only for infinite-size samples, and little is known how TPT occurs for finite-size samples. Here, using both systematic transport measurements on interface-engineered (Bi1-xInx)2Se3 thin films and theoretical simulations (with animations in the Supporting Information), we show that description of TPT in finite-size samples needs to be substantially modified from the conventional picture of TPT due to surface-state hybridization and bulk confinement effects. We also show that the finite-size TPT is composed of two separate transitions, topological-normal transition (TNT) and metal-insulator transition (MIT), by providing a detailed phase diagram in the two-dimensional phase space of sample size and SOC strength.