For the first time, researchers have achieved accelerated entanglement generation in a non‑Hermitian system using a trapped‑ion experimental platform. This breakthrough surpasses the traditional Hermitian quantum speed limit, enhancing the preparation speed of entangled states by a factor of 1.52.

The research, led by FENG Mang from the Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology (APM) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with researchers from Zhengzhou University and other institutions, was recently published online in Physical Review Letters.

Quantum entanglement is the core resource for quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum sensing. In traditional Hermitian quantum systems, the speed of entanglement generation is fundamentally limited by the coupling strength between qubits. Whether this limit can be broken to achieve faster quantum manipulation is a frontier topic in quantum information science.

In this study, the researchers introduced controllable dissipation into the ion trap system and constructed a non‑Hermitian Hamiltonian with parity‑time (PT) symmetry. Although dissipation effects are generally regarded as factors that destroy quantum coherence, controllable dissipation can tune the system parameters near the exceptional point, induce geometric distortion of the Hilbert space, and thereby accelerate the evolution of quantum states.

Their results show that by exploiting this mechanism, the speed of generating the maximally entangled state is enhanced by a factor of 1.52 compared with the traditional Hermitian scheme. However, the more significant the acceleration, the lower the success probability.

To balance this trade‑off, the researchers selected a working point that optimizes both acceleration and success probability in the experiment. Parity‑oscillation measurements verified that the prepared entangled state still exhibits high fidelity, thus successfully demonstrating the practical feasibility of non‑Hermitian acceleration.

This achievement provides the first experimental confirmation in a programmable quantum system that non‑Hermitian systems can break the traditionally recognized quantum speed limit, and also demonstrates that dissipation can serve as a controllable resource to accelerate quantum dynamics.

According to the researchers, this study offers a fresh approach for designing high‑speed quantum gates and quantum sensors, and opens a new direction for interdisciplinary research at the intersection of non‑Hermitian physics and quantum information science.

YUAN Wenfei, a PhD candidate from APM, LIU Bingbing, a PhD candidate from Zhengzhou University, and LI Ning, a master's student from APM, are the co‑first authors. The co‑corresponding authors are Associate Researcher ZHOU Fei from APM, Professor SU Shilei from Zhengzhou University, and Researcher FENG Mang from APM.

This research was funded by the Joint Fund Project and the General Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China.