An electromechanical Ising Hamiltonian

Abstract

Solving intractable mathematical problems in simulators composed of atoms, ions, photons, or electrons has recently emerged as a subject of intense interest. We extend this concept to phonons that are localized in spectrally pure resonances in an electromechanical system that enables their interactions to be exquisitely fashioned via electrical means. We harness this platform to emulate the Ising Hamiltonian whose spin 1/2 particles are replicated by the phase bistable vibrations from the parametric resonances of multiple modes. The coupling between the mechanical spins is created by generating two-mode squeezed states, which impart correlations between modes that can imitate a random, ferromagnetic state or an antiferromagnetic state on demand. These results suggest that an electromechanical simulator could be built for the Ising Hamiltonian in a nontrivial configuration, namely, for a large number of spins with multiple degrees of coupling.