title: Dicke simulators with emergent collective quantum computational abilities.
abstract: Using an approach inspired from spin glasses, we show that the multimode disordered Dicke model is equivalent to a quantum Hopfield network. We propose variational ground states for the system at zero temperature, which we conjecture to be exact in the thermodynamic limit. These ground states contain the information on the disordered qubit-photon couplings. These results lead to two intriguing physical implications. First, once the qubit-photon couplings can be engineered, it should be possible to build scalable pattern-storing systems whose dynamics is governed by quantum laws. Second, we argue with an example of how such Dicke quantum simulators might be used as a solver of "hard" combinatorial optimization problems.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Milano and INFN, via Celoria 16, 20133 Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: Pietro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rotondo
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR 7238, Computational and Quantitative Biology, 15 rue de l'École de Médecine, 75006 Paris, France and CNRS, UMR 7238, 75006 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cosentino Lagomarsino
authors.affiliation: Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience (MC2), Chalmers University of Technology, SE-412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden.|Institute for Quantum Information, RWTH Aachen University, D-52056 Aachen, Germany.
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Viola
mesh_terms: D005898:Glass / Q000737:chemistry; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D011789:Quantum Theory; D013816:Thermodynamics