Digital quantum simulation of q -deformed SU(2) Yang-Mills theory on a trapped-ion quantum computer
Anonymous, Yoshimasa Hidaka, Yuta Kikuchi · Physical Review Research · 2026
Nonequilibrium dynamics of quantum many-body systems is one of the main targets of quantum simulations. This focus—together with rapid advances in quantum-computing hardware—has driven increasing applications in high-energy physics, particularly in lattice gauge theories. However, most existing experimental demonstrations remain restricted to (1+1)-dimensional and/or Abelian gauge theories, such as the Schwinger model and the toric code. It is essential to develop quantum simulations of non-Abelian gauge theories in higher dimensions, addressing realistic problems in high-energy physics. To fill the gap, we demonstrate a quantum simulation of real-time dynamics in a (2+1)-dimensional q -deformed SU ( 2 ) 3 Yang-Mills theory using a trapped-ion quantum computer. By restricting the irreducible representations of the gauge fields to the integer-spin sector of SU ( 2 ) 3 , we obtain a simplified yet nontrivial model described by Fibonacci anyons, which preserves the essential non-Abelian fusion structure of the gauge fields. As a demonstration, we simulate the real-time dynamics of this model using quantum circuits that explicitly implement F -moves. In our demonstrations, the quantum circuits execute up to 47 sequential F -moves. We identify idling errors as the dominant error source, which can be effectively mitigated using dynamical decoupling combined with a parallelized implementation of F -moves.