Comment on "Traversable wormhole dynamics on a quantum processor"

February, 2023

Abstract

A recent article [Nature 612, 51-55 (2022)] claims to observe traversable wormhole dynamics in an experiment. This claim is based upon performing a teleportation protocol using a Hamiltonian that consists of seven Majorana fermions with five fully-commuting terms. The Hamiltonian is generated via a machine-learning procedure designed to replicate the teleportation behavior of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. The authors claim that the learned Hamiltonian reproduces gravitational dynamics of the SYK model and demonstrates gravitational teleportation through an emergent wormhole. We find: (i) in contrast to these claims, the learned Hamiltonian does not exhibit thermalization; (ii) the teleportation signal only resembles the SYK model for operators that were used in the machine-learning training; (iii) the observed perfect size winding is in fact a generic feature of small-size, fully-commuting models, and does not appear to persist in larger-size fully-commuting models or in non-commuting models at equivalent system sizes.