ABSTRACT The holographic principle, theorized to be a property of quantum gravity, postulates that the description of a volume of space can be encoded on a lower-dimensional boundary. The

anti-de Sitter (AdS)/conformal field theory correspondence or duality1 is the principal example of holography. The Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev (SYK) model of _N_ ≫ 1 Majorana fermions2,3 has features

suggesting the existence of a gravitational dual in AdS2, and is a new realization of holography4,5,6. We invoke the holographic correspondence of the SYK many-body system and gravity to

probe the conjectured ER=EPR relation between entanglement and spacetime geometry7,8 through the traversable wormhole mechanism as implemented in the SYK model9,10. A qubit can be used to

nine-qubit circuit and observe the corresponding traversable wormhole dynamics. Despite its approximate nature, the sparsified SYK model preserves key properties of the traversable wormhole

physics: perfect size winding11,12,13, coupling on either side of the wormhole that is consistent with a negative energy shockwave14, a Shapiro time delay15, causal time-order of signals

emerging from the wormhole, and scrambling and thermalization dynamics16,17. Our experiment was run on the Google Sycamore processor. By interrogating a two-dimensional gravity dual system,

our work represents a step towards a program for studying quantum gravity in the laboratory. Future developments will require improved hardware scalability and performance as well as

theoretical developments including higher-dimensional quantum gravity duals18 and other SYK-like models19. Access through your institution Buy or subscribe This is a preview of subscription

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about institutional subscriptions * Read our FAQs * Contact customer support SIMILAR CONTENT BEING VIEWED BY OTHERS A QUANTUM PROCESSOR BASED ON COHERENT TRANSPORT OF ENTANGLED ATOM ARRAYS

Article Open access 20 April 2022 MEASUREMENT-INDUCED ENTANGLEMENT AND TELEPORTATION ON A NOISY QUANTUM PROCESSOR Article Open access 18 October 2023 PROBING ENTANGLEMENT IN A 2D HARD-CORE

BOSE–HUBBARD LATTICE Article Open access 24 April 2024 DATA AVAILABILITY Data from this work are available upon request. CODE AVAILABILITY Code from this work is available upon request.

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_Toy Models of Quantum Gravity_. PhD thesis, Harvard Univ. (2022); https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37372099. * Zlokapa, A. _Quantum Computing for Machine Learning and Physics

Simulation_. BSc thesis, California Institute of Technology (2021); https://doi.org/10.7907/q75q-zm20. Download references ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The experiment was performed in collaboration with

the Google Quantum AI hardware team, under the direction of A. Megrant, J. Kelly and Y. Chen. We acknowledge the work of the team in fabricating and packaging the processor; building and

outfitting the cryogenic and control systems; executing baseline calibrations; optimizing processor performance and providing the tools to execute the experiment. Specialized device

calibration methods were developed by the physics team led by V. Smelyanskiy. We in particular thank X. Mi and P. Roushan for their technical support in carrying out the experiment and are

grateful to B. Kobrin for useful discussions and validation studies. This work is supported by the Department of Energy Office of High Energy Physics QuantISED programme grant no. SC0019219

on Quantum Communication Channels for Fundamental Physics. Furthermore, A.Z. acknowledges support from the Hertz Foundation, the Department of Defense through the National Defense Science

and Engineering Graduate Fellowship Program, and Caltech’s Intelligent Quantum Networks and Technologies research programme. S.I.D. is partially supported by the Brinson Foundation. Fermilab

is operated by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC under contract number DE-AC02-07CH11359 with the United States Department of Energy. We are grateful to A. Kitaev, J. Preskill, L. Susskind, P.

Hayden, A. Brown, S. Nezami, J. Maldacena, N. Yao, K. Thorne and D. Gross for insightful discussions and comments that helped us improve the manuscript. We are also grateful to graduate

student O. Cerri for the error analysis of the experimental data. M.S. thanks the members of the QCCFP (Quantum Communication Channels for Fundamental Physics) QuantISED Consortium and

acknowledges P. Dieterle for the thorough inspection of the manuscript. AUTHOR INFORMATION Author notes * These authors contributed equally: Daniel Jafferis, Alexander Zlokapa AUTHORS AND

AFFILIATIONS * Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Daniel Jafferis & David K. Kolchmeyer * Center for Theoretical Physics, Massachusetts

Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA Alexander Zlokapa * Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, Caltech, Pasadena, CA, USA Alexander Zlokapa, Samantha I. Davis, Nikolai Lauk 

& Maria Spiropulu * Alliance for Quantum Technologies (AQT), California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA Alexander Zlokapa, Samantha I. Davis, Nikolai Lauk & Maria

Spiropulu * Google Quantum AI, Venice, CA, USA Alexander Zlokapa & Hartmut Neven * Fermilab Quantum Institute and Theoretical Physics Department, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory,

Batavia, IL, USA Joseph D. Lykken Authors * Daniel Jafferis View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Alexander Zlokapa View author publications

You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Joseph D. Lykken View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * David K. Kolchmeyer View

author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Samantha I. Davis View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar *

Nikolai Lauk View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Hartmut Neven View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google

Scholar * Maria Spiropulu View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar CONTRIBUTIONS J.D.L. and D.J. are senior co-principal investigators of the

QCCFP Consortium. J.D.L. worked on the conception of the research program, theoretical calculations, computation aspects, simulations and validations. D.J. is one of the inventors of the SYK

traversable wormhole protocol. He worked on all theoretical aspects of the research and the validation of the wormhole dynamics. Graduate student D.K.K.47 worked on theoretical aspects and

calculations of the chord diagrams. Graduate student S.I.D. worked on computation and simulation aspects. Graduate student A.Z.48 worked on all theory and computation aspects, the learning

methods that solved the sparsification challenge, the coding of the protocol on the Sycamore and the coordination with the Google Quantum AI team. Postdoctoral scholar N.L. worked on the

working group coordination aspects, meetings and workshops, and follow-up on all outstanding challenges. Google’s VP Engineering, Quantum AI, H.N. coordinated project resources on behalf of

the Google Quantum AI team. M.S. is the lead principal investigator of the QCCFP Consortium Project. She conceived and proposed the on-chip traversable wormhole research program in 2018,

assembled the group with the appropriate areas of expertise and worked on all aspects of the research and the manuscript together with all authors. CORRESPONDING AUTHOR Correspondence to

Maria Spiropulu. ETHICS DECLARATIONS COMPETING INTERESTS The authors declare no competing interests. PEER REVIEW PEER REVIEW INFORMATION _Nature_ thanks the anonymous reviewers for their

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permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Jafferis, D., Zlokapa, A., Lykken, J.D. _et al._ Traversable wormhole dynamics on a quantum processor. _Nature_ 612, 51–55 (2022).

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05424-3 Download citation * Received: 22 February 2022 * Accepted: 07 October 2022 * Published: 30 November 2022 * Issue Date: 01 December 2022 * DOI:

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