Robust Chiral Edge Dynamics of a Kitaev Honeycomb on a Trapped Ion Processor

Abstract

Kitaev's honeycomb model is a paradigmatic exactly solvable system hosting a quantum spin liquid with non-Abelian anyons and topologically protected edge modes, offering a platform for fault-tolerant quantum computation. However, real candidate Kitaev materials invariably include complex secondary interactions that obscure the realization of spin-liquid behavior and demand novel quantum computational approaches for efficient simulation. Here we report quantum simulations of a 22-site Kitaev honeycomb lattice on a trapped-ion quantum processor, without and with non-integrable Heisenberg interactions that are present in real materials. We develop efficient quantum circuits for ground-state preparation, achieving high accuracy with energy errors equivalent to an effective temperature of 0.2 (in units of the Kitaev interactions), consistent with the experimentally relevant spin-liquid regime. Starting from these states, we apply controlled perturbations and measure time-dependent spin correlations along the system's edge. In the non-Abelian phase, we observe chiral edge dynamics consistent with a non-zero Chern number, a hallmark of topological order, which vanishes upon transition to the Abelian toric code phase. Extending to the non-integrable Kitaev-Heisenberg model, we find that weak Heisenberg interactions preserve chiral edge dynamics, while stronger couplings suppress them, signaling the breakdown of topological protection. Our work demonstrates a viable route for probing dynamical signatures of topological order in quantum spin liquids using programmable quantum hardware, opening new pathways for quantum simulation of strongly correlated materials.