Interplay of Confinement and Localization in a Programmable Rydberg Atom Chain

Abstract

Analog quantum simulators promise access to complex many-body dynamics, yet their performance is ultimately set by how device imperfections compete with intrinsic physical mechanisms. Here we present an end-to-end study of correlation spreading in a programmable Rydberg-atom chain realizing a longitudinal-field transverse-field Ising model, focusing on the joint impact of confinement and effective disorder. Experiments performed on QuEra's Aquila quantum processor are benchmarked against large-scale coherent emulations using the Juelich Quantum Annealing Simulator (JUQAS), enabling the controlled inclusion of realistic hardware imperfections. In the ideal coherent limit, a tunable longitudinal field induces confinement of domain-wall excitations into mesonic bound states, leading to a progressive truncation of the correlation light cone. When experimentally relevant inhomogeneities and fluctuations are included, correlations instead saturate at finite distance even in the nominally deconfined regime, revealing localization driven by emergent disorder. The close quantitative agreement between noisy emulations and experimental data allows us to attribute the observed saturation to specific hardware error channels and to identify the dominant contribution. Our results establish a practical framework for diagnosing and modeling error-induced localization in Rydberg quantum processors, while demonstrating that confinement remains a robust and programmable mechanism for engineering non-ergodic dynamics on near-term quantum hardware.