Hybrid Analog-Digital Simulation of the Abelian Higgs model

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 12 Mar 2026] Hybrid Analog-Digital Simulation of the Abelian Higgs model Muhammad Asaduzzaman, Rayleigh W. Parker, Noah Goss, Ahmed I. Mohamed, Max Neiderbach, Zane Ozzello, Ravi K. Naik, Alexander F. Kemper, Irfan Siddiqi, Yannick Meurice, Machiel S. Blok To investigate gauge theories with near-term quantum computers warrants exploration of nontraditional quantum simulators to find resource-efficient simulation protocols and ultimately access exotic features of different field theories, including unexplored regimes of the QCD phase diagram. In this work, using superconducting transmon qutrit processors, we formulate and implement a pulse-based, three-level, hybrid analog-digital simulation protocol of the (1+1) dimensional Abelian Higgs model (AHM) on two sites. Alongside this approach, we experimentally realize a gate-based implementation of the same model. Using the natural mapping of the three-level truncation of the transmon Hilbert space to the spin-1 truncated AHM, we observe real time dynamics of AHM field observables, which are analogous to electric field operators, with both protocols. For the analog-digital protocol, we engineer a Floquet simulation with a combination of local analog drives, driven modification of the natural interaction Hamiltonian of the two transmons, and dynamical decoupling pulses. For the digital protocol, we use a state-of-the-art qutrit processor to implement a Trotterized simulation of the model incorporating advanced error mitigation techniques. We further discuss the scalability of the two approaches, and their potential to be extended to the simulation of other model Hamiltonians. Our experiments demonstrate a viable platform for future studies of spin-1 and SU(3) based gauge theory models on current and near-term transmon qutrit processors. Comments: 31 pages, 14 figures Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); High Energy Physics - Lattice (hep-lat) Cite as: arXiv:2603.12391 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2603.12391v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.12391 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Muhammad Asaduzzaman [view email] [v1] Thu, 12 Mar 2026 19:10:16 UTC (2,800 KB) Access Paper: view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-03 Change to browse by: hep-lat References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)