Hybrid Analog–Digital Approach to Simulating the Abelian Higgs Model: (ii) Experiment

Qudits offer a natural platform for quantum simulation of physical systems whose individual components can take three or more states. In Part (ii) of this two-part talk, we present results from a Floquet-based analog-digital approach to engineering the Hamiltonian of the Abelian Higgs Model on a pair of transmon qutrits. We employ analog multitone detuned driving to simulate on-site spin-1 Hamiltonian terms in the model, and we simultaneously engineer a spin-1 Ising interaction term with a Stark-induced modification of the native cross-Kerr interaction in combination with periodic population swaps. We implement this effective Hamiltonian on a superconducting qutrit processor and compare the advantages and disadvantages of this method to those of the fully digital protocol shown in Part (i) of the talk.