Interacting non-Hermitian edge and cluster bursts on a digital quantum processor

A lossy quantum system harboring the non-Hermitian skin effect can in certain conditions exhibit anomalously high loss at the boundaries of the system compared to the bulk, a phenomenon termed the non-Hermitian edge burst. We uncover interacting many-body extensions of the edge burst that are spatially extended and patterned, as well as cluster bursts that occur away from boundaries. Owing to the methodological difficulty and overhead of accurately realizing non-Hermitian dynamical evolution, much less tunable interactions, few experimental avenues in studying the single-particle edge burst have been reported to date and none for many-body variants. We overcome these roadblocks in this study, and present a realization of edge and cluster bursts in an interacting quantum ladder model on a superconducting quantum processor. We utilize a time-stepping algorithm, which implements time-evolution by non-Hermitian Hamiltonians by composing a linear combination of unitaries scheme and product formulae, to assess long-time behavior of the system. We observe signatures of the non-Hermitian edge burst on up to 64 unit cells, and detect the closing of the dissipative gap, a necessary condition for the edge burst, by probing the imaginary spectrum of the system. In suitable interacting regimes, we identify the emergence of spatial patterning and cluster bursts. Beyond establishing these generalized forms of edge burst phenomena, our study paves the way for digital quantum processors to be harnessed as a versatile platform for non-Hermitian condensed-matter physics.