Simulating the Interplay of Particle Conservation and Long-Range Coherence

Abstract

Lasers and Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) exhibit macroscopic quantum coherence in seemingly unrelated ways. Lasers possess a well-defined global phase while the number of photons fluctuates. In BECs of atoms, instead, the number of particles is conserved and the global phase is undefined. Here, we use gate-based quantum circuits to create a unified framework that connects lasers and BEC states. Our approach relies on a scalable circuit that measures the total number of particles without destroying long-range coherence. We introduce two complementary probes of global and relative phase coherence, study how they are affected by measurements of the particle number, and implement them on a superconducting quantum computer by Rigetti. We find that particle conservation enhances long-range phase coherence, highlighting a mechanism used by superfluids and superconductors to gain phase stiffness.