Quantum Annealing Simulation of Out-of-Equilibrium Magnetization in a Spin-Chain Compound
Andrew D. King, Cristian D. Batista, Jack Raymond, T. Lanting, Isil Ozfidan, Gabriel Poulin-Lamarre, Hao Zhang, M. H. S. Amin
Abstract
Geometrically frustrated spin-chain compounds such as Ca 3 Co 2 O 6 exhibit extremely slow relaxation under a changing magnetic field. Consequently, both low-temperature laboratory experiments and Monte Carlo simulations have shown peculiar out-of-equilibrium magnetization curves, which arise from trapping in metastable configurations. In this work, we simulate this phenomenon in a superconducting quantum annealing processor, allowing us to probe the impact of quantum fluctuations on both the equilibrium and dynamics of the system. Increasing the quantum fluctuations with a transverse field reduces the impact of metastable traps in out-of-equilibrium samples and aids the development of three-sublattice ferrimagnetic (up-up-down) long-range order with magnetization 1/3. At equilibrium, we identify a finitetemperature shoulder in the 1/3-to-saturated phase transition, promoted by quantum fluctuations but with an entropic origin. This work demonstrates the viability of dynamical as well as equilibrium studies of frustrated magnetism using large-scale programmable quantum systems and is therefore an important step toward programmable simulation of dynamics in materials using quantum hardware.