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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Collective three-body interactions enable a robust quantum speedup

Haoqing Zhang1,2,*, Anjun Chu1,2,3, Chengyi Luo1,4,5, Chitose Maruko1, Eliot A. Bohr1, James K. Thompson1, and Ana Maria Rey1,2

  • 1JILA, NIST and Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
  • 2Center for Theory of Quantum Matter, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
  • 3Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA
  • 4Thomas J. Watson, Sr., Laboratory of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena CA 91125, USA
  • 5Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena CA 91125, USA

  • *Contact author: hazh2686@colorado.edu
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, L032025 – Published 17 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/2pg6-vd1j

Abstract

We show that collective three-body interactions (3BIs), implementable with N atoms loaded inside an optical cavity, offer a significant advantage for preparing complex multipartite entangled states. First, they enable a speedup of order ∼N in preparing generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states, outperforming conventional methods based on all-to-all two-body Ising interactions. Second, they saturate the Heisenberg bound in phase estimation tasks using a time-reversal protocol realized through simple rotations and followed by experimentally accessible collective spin measurements. Finally, compared with two-body interactions, in the presence of cavity losses and single particle decoherence, 3BIs feature a high gain in sensitivity for moderate atom numbers and in large ensembles a fast entanglement generation despite constraints in parameter regimes where they are implementable.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, L032025– Published 17 August, 2026
  • Received 9 December 2025
  • Accepted 6 May 2026
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