Programmable spectral symmetries in an anisotropic quantum Rabi simulator

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 3 Jun 2026] Programmable spectral symmetries in an anisotropic quantum Rabi simulator Jia-Cheng Song, Yu Liu, Ming-Chuan Wang, Ke-Xiong Yan, Yang He, Yun-Hao Shi, Wei-Ping Yuan, Cheng-Lin Deng, Li Li, Zhen-Ting Bao, Yutao Chen, Xu-Yang Gu, Tian-Ming Li, Gui-Han Liang, Zheng-He Liu, Wei-Guo Ma, Zhen-Yu Peng, Shuai-Li Wang, Yong-Xi Xiao, Yi-Han Yu, Jia-Chi Zhang, Kui Zhao, Min-Xuan Zhou, Kaixuan Huang, Yu-Ran Zhang, Yu-Xiang Zhang, Zhongcheng Xiang, Dongning Zheng, Ye-Hong Chen, Kai Xu, Heng Fan The quantum Rabi model captures fundamental aspects of light--matter interaction, where symmetry dictates both spectra and dynamics. Over the past years, experiments have explored many of its nonperturbative properties, but have mostly focused on the isotropic limit, where rotating and counterrotating processes are locked together, leaving the broader symmetry landscape largely unexplored. Here we realize a programmable anisotropic quantum Rabi model in a superconducting processor, with independent control of the rotating and counterrotating couplings (g_1,g_2) and of a transverse bias \varepsilon. Continuous anisotropy tuning, combined with a duality mapping, gives access to the full parameter space from the Jaynes-Cummings to the anti-Jaynes-Cummings limits. In the deep-strong-coupling regime, we show that anisotropy reconstructs the spectrum and turns complete collapse-revival dynamics into incomplete revivals even near degeneracy. With adiabatic state preparation and joint tomography, we resolve an anisotropy-induced ground-state parity switch, a crossing that has no analogue in the isotropic model. We further observe selective tunnelling associated with hidden symmetry in biased Rabi models and track its anisotropic displacement within the same device. These results establish a controllable route to engineering nonperturbative light--matter Hamiltonians, where symmetry, spectrum, and dynamics can be programmed independently. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2606.05270 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2606.05270v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.05270 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Jia-Cheng Song [view email] [v1] Wed, 3 Jun 2026 17:08:27 UTC (8,769 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-06 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?)