Quantum simulation of gauge theories on dynamical spacetimes via Floquet-induced matrix models

Abstract

Quantum simulations of gauge theories are typically built on spatial lattices, an approach that has enabled major progress at the cost of requiring fixed background geometries and obscuring the treatment of curved and dynamical spacetimes. Large-$N$ matrix models offer an alternative, encoding spacetime geometry and gauge fields in the commutation structure of a set of Hermitian matrices, with the classical continuum emerging smoothly at large matrix dimensions. Here we introduce a Floquet framework that makes these models directly accessible to programmable quantum platforms. We show that Euclidean path integral weights of a Yang-Mills matrix models are reproduced, at leading order in the coupling, by the ensemble-averaged fidelities of Haar-random states evolved under periodic sequences of matrix operators. The observables for the simulated matrix model can then be accessed through established randomized benchmarking protocols in terms of the Loschmidt echo. The encoding requires exponentially fewer qubits than canonically quantized approaches. Numerically, we validate the fidelity-weight correspondence, demonstrate parallelized quantum circuits that sample the path-integral measure, and identify the deconfinement transition of an $SU(2)$ gauge field on both flat and expanding cosmological backgrounds. By avoiding a fixed spacetime lattice, the framework preserves continuous symmetries and unitarity on dynamical geometries, opening quantum simulation to field and spacetime dynamics beyond the reach of conventional lattice methods.