Probing entanglement scaling across a quantum phase transition on a quantum computer
The investigation of strongly-correlated quantum matter is challenging due to the curse of dimensionality and complex entanglement structures. This complexity is especially pronounced in the vicinity of continuous quantum phase transitions, where quantum fluctuations occur on all length scales. While quantum simulators give well-controlled access to strongly-correlated systems, the study of critical systems has been hampered by strong finite-size effects caused by diverging correlation lengths, and there has been limited progress on methods to probe many-body entanglement due to restrictions in measurement protocols. We address these challenges by using the multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA) and implementing a holographic subsystem tomography on a fully-connected trapped-ion quantum computer. Our method accurately represents infinite systems and long-range correlations with few qubits, enabling the efficient extraction of observables and entanglement properties also at criticality. We observe a quantum phase transitions with spontaneous symmetry breaking and reveal the evolution of entanglement measures across the critical point. For the first time, we demonstrate log-law scaling of subsystem entanglement entropies at criticality on a digital quantum computer. This demonstrates the potential of MERA for a practicable investigation of strongly-correlated many-body systems on quantum computers.
