Innsbruck physicists led by Rainer Blatt and Peter Zoller have gained a deep insight into the nature of quantum mechanical phase transitions. They are the first scientists that simulated the competition between two rival dynamical processes at a novel type of transition between two quantum mechanical orders.
They have published the results of their work in the journal Nature Physics.
"When water boils, its molecules are released as vapor. We call this change of the physical state of matter a phase transition," explains Sebastian Diehl from the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Innsbruck. Together with his colleagues from the Institute for Experimental Physics and the theorist Markus Mueller from the Complutense University of Madrid, he studied the transition between two quantum mechanical orders in a way never before observed. The quantum physicists in Innsbruck use a new device for the experiment, which is currently considered to be one of the most promising developments in quantum physics: a quantum simulator. It is based on a small-scale quantum computer and can simulate physical phenomena a classical computer cannot investigate efficiently. "Such a quantum simulator allows us to experimentally study quantum phenomena in many-body systems that are coupled to their environment," explain experimental physicists Philipp Schindler and Thomas Monz.
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