Quantum Simulation of the Bosonic Kitaev Chain‏

There has been a growing interest in simulating topological physics in non-Hermitian lattice models. In this work, we utilize our analog quantum simulation (AQS) platform to realize the bosonic counterpart of the fermionic Kitaev chain, a 1D tight-binding model with nearest-neighbor hopping and pairing terms. Despite its Hermitian nature, the bosonic Kitaev chain displays intriguing non-Hermitian characteristics, such as chiral transport and sensitivity to boundary conditions. In this experiment, we utilize a multimode superconducting parametric cavity to simulate the bosonic Kitaev chain in a synthetic frequency dimension. On our AQS platform, the frequency modes correspond to the lattice sites, and the complex hopping and pairing are created through parametric pumping at the difference and sum of mode frequencies, respectively. We demonstrate precursors of nontrivial topology and the non-Hermitian skin effect: chiral transport, localization of the quadrature wavefunctions, and sensitivity to boundary conditions. Our platform has great potential for studying genuine non-Hermitian quantum dynamics.