Digital-analog simulations of Schrödinger cat states in the Dicke-Ising model

The Dicke-Ising model, one of the few paradigmatic models of matter-light interaction, exhibits a superradiant quantum phase transition above a critical coupling strength. However, in natural optical systems, its experimental validation is hindered by a “no-go theorem.” Here, we propose a digital-analog quantum simulator for this model based on an ensemble of interacting qubits coupled to a single-mode photonic resonator. We analyze the system's free-energy landscape using field-theoretical methods and develop a digital-analog quantum algorithm that disentangles qubit and photon degrees of freedom through a parity-measurement protocol. This disentangling enables the emulation of a photonic Schrödinger cat state, which is a hallmark of the superradiant ground state in finite-size systems and can be unambiguously probed through the Wigner tomography of the resonator's field.