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Experimental Observation of Multimode Quantum Phase Transitions in a Superconducting Bose-Hubbard Simulator

Claudia Castillo-Moreno1,*, Théo Sépulcre1,†, Timo Hillmann1,2, Kazi Rafsanjani Amin1, Mikael Kervinen1,‡, and Simone Gasparinetti1,§

  • *Contact author: claudiac@chalmers.se
  • †Present address: Center for Quantum Computing, RIKEN, Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.
  • ‡Present address: VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd. Tietotie 3, Espoo 02150, Finland.
  • §Contact author: simoneg@chalmers.se
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PRX Quantum 7, 033030 – Published 17 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/rvhv-ms4t

Abstract

The study of phase transitions and critical phenomena arising in quantum driven-dissipative systems, and whether a correspondence can be drawn to their equilibrium counterparts, is a pressing question in contemporary physics. The development of large-scale superconducting circuits provides an experimental platform for these theoretical models. We report an experimental study of a multimode dissipative first-order phase transition in a 1D Bose-Hubbard chain consisting of 21 superconducting resonators. This phase transition manifests itself as a simultaneous frequency jump in all resonator modes as the frequency or power of a pump tone is swept. By measuring the system’s emission spectrum through the transition, we characterize the dim-to-bright phase transition and construct the full phase diagram. We further perform time-dependent measurements of the switching between the two phases in the transition region, from which we corroborate the transition line and extract transition times ranging from a few ms up to 143 s. Our model, based on single-mode mean-field theory and cross-Kerr interactions, captures the features at moderate pump powers and quantitatively reproduces the transition line. Our results open a new window into nonequilibrium quantum many-body physics and mark a step toward realizing and understanding dissipative phase transitions in the thermodynamic limit using superconducting quantum circuits. In addition, our study opens new possibilities for sensing and cryo-switching applications.

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Popular Summary

Understanding how collective phases emerge in driven and dissipative quantum systems is a central challenge in many-body physics. In interacting bosonic lattices, the competition between external driving, dissipation, and nonlinear interactions can produce nonequilibrium phase transitions with no equilibrium counterpart. Although these effects have been widely studied theoretically, the existence of first-order multimode dissipative phase transitions in one-dimensional systems has remained unexplored. In this work, we realize a 21-site superconducting Bose-Hubbard lattice and experimentally observe a multimode driven-dissipative phase transition. By coherently driving a single mode of the array, we observe bistability and collective switching between low- and high-photon states involving multiple interacting modes. Using complementary spectroscopic, incoherent emission, and time-domain measurements, we map the phase diagram and switching dynamics of the system, finding strong agreement with our theoretical predictions. These results provide experimental evidence of a first-order multimode dissipative phase transition in one dimension and advance the understanding of nonequilibrium many-body dynamics in photonic systems. The observed long-lived bistability and controllable switching dynamics also suggest direct applications in quantum sensing for single-photon detection.

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PRX Quantum 7, 033030– Published 17 August, 2026
  • Received 29 August 2025
  • Revised 20 February 2026
  • Accepted 24 June 2026
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