Observation of glueball excitations and string breaking in a 2+1D Z₂ lattice gauge theory on a trapped-ion quantum computer · arXivDesk
2604.07435Apr 8, 2026$12+7$ pages, $4+6$ figures, $0+1$ table. See parallel submission by R. Joshi et al., "Observation of genuine $2+1$D string dynamics in a U$(1)$ lattice gauge theory with a tunable plaquette term on a trapped-ion quantum computer''
Observation of glueball excitations and string breaking in a 2+1D Z2 lattice gauge theory on a trapped-ion quantum computer
Kaidi Xu, Umberto Borla, Kevin Hemery, Rohan Joshi, Henrik Dreyer, Enrico Rinaldi, Jad C. Halimeh
A major goal of the quantum simulation of high-energy physics (HEP) is to probe real-time nonperturbative far-from-equilibrium quantum processes underlying phenomena such as hadronization in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The quantum simulation of the dynamics of confining strings and glueballs, both essential aspects of quark confinement, in a controllable first-principles way is an important step towards this goal. Here, we realize a Z2 lattice gauge theory in 2+1D with a tunable plaquette term on a Quantinuum System Model H2 trapped-ion quantum computer. We implement a shallow depth-6 Trotter circuit on a 6×5
Nearby in the stack
matter-site square lattice utilizing all
56
available qubits to execute over
1000
entangling gates. We prepare far-from-equilibrium initial string configurations that we quench across a range of parameters to observe rich dynamical phenomena, such as the formation of gauge-invariant closed-loop excitations reminiscent of glueballs in QCD and multi-order string breaking accompanied by spontaneous matter creation. We further demonstrate experimentally that the system displays genuine
2+1
D dynamics, as evidenced by string snapshots over time that cannot be trivially mapped to
1+1
D physics. Our results demonstrate digital quantum simulations of nonequilibrium dynamics in a higher-dimensional lattice gauge theory and provide an experimentally accessible setting for phenomena related to confinement physics.