Glassy dynamics with softened kinetic constraints on a noisy quantum computer
Abstract
Mid-circuit measurements provide direct access to trajectory-level observables, revealing dynamical structures in many-body systems that are invisible in ensemble-averaged quantities. We exploit this capability to realize and study an instance of the Floquet-East model on a superconducting quantum processor. Here, the combination of mid-circuit measurements, kinetically constrained unitary operations and hardware noise gives rise to intricate many-body phenomena. Analyzing trajectories obtained from temporally and spatially resolved mid-circuit measurements, we identify dynamical heterogeneity --- a hallmark of glassy dynamics. We quantify this emergent behavior by studying the probability of finding inactive space-time regions of a given size. This quantity displays a crossover from area- to perimeter-dominated scaling, which is a characteristic property of glasses and is associated with the proximity to a dynamical first-order phase transition. Our results establish current noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices as scalable testbeds for investigating correlated many-body phenomena at the level of measurement trajectories.
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BibTeX
@misc{cech2026glassy,
title = {{Glassy dynamics with softened kinetic constraints on a noisy quantum computer}},
author = {Marcel Cech and Igor Lesanovsky and Federico Carollo},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.19335},
eprint = {2608.19335},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19335},
note = {CC BY-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Glassy dynamics with softened kinetic constraints on a noisy quantum computer
AU - Marcel Cech
AU - Igor Lesanovsky
AU - Federico Carollo
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/28
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.19335
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19335
AB - Mid-circuit measurements provide direct access to trajectory-level observables, revealing dynamical structures in many-body systems that are invisible in ensemble-averaged quantities. We exploit this capability to realize and study an instance of the Floquet-East model on a superconducting quantum processor. Here, the combination of mid-circuit measurements, kinetically constrained unitary operations and hardware noise gives rise to intricate many-body phenomena. Analyzing trajectories obtained from temporally and spatially resolved mid-circuit measurements, we identify dynamical heterogeneity --- a hallmark of glassy dynamics. We quantify this emergent behavior by studying the probability of finding inactive space-time regions of a given size. This quantity displays a crossover from area- to perimeter-dominated scaling, which is a characteristic property of glasses and is associated with the proximity to a dynamical first-order phase transition. Our results establish current noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices as scalable testbeds for investigating correlated many-body phenomena at the level of measurement trajectories.
ER -