aithful simulations of the world are impossible to create using ordinary computers. Simulating physical reality is, however, the original, express purpose of quantum computers. In 1981, long before quantum computers gained notoriety as potential tools for breaking encryption, the physicist Richard Feynman planted the seed for what is now a multibillion-dollar effort to build them, famously quipping (opens a new tab): “Nature isn’t classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you’d better make it quantum mechanical.”
Quantum computers, though still small and rudimentary, have now grown sufficiently advanced that physicists are using them to simulate tiny pieces of nature.
In a lab in Innsbruck, Austria, for example, physicists recently used a quantum computer to simulate a 2D patch of the electromagnetic field. They observed quantum jitter in their digital field — pairs of particles springing from nothing and vanishing again.
The electromagnetic field is already well understood. But physicists’ long-term goal is to simulate complex physical processes that are beyond the reach of pen-and-paper calculations. “We have this big dream that a future quantum simulator can help us with our burning questions,” said Christine Muschik (opens a new tab), a theoretical physicist at the University of Waterloo in Canada, who joined forces with Martin Ringbauer (opens a new tab)’s lab at the University of Innsbruck for the electromagnetic field simulation.
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