Neural Networks Take on Open Quantum Systems

Neural networks are behind technologies that are revolutionizing our daily lives, such as face recognition, web searching, and medical diagnosis. These general problem solvers reach their solutions by being adapted or “trained” to capture correlations in real-world data. Having seen the success of neural networks, physicists are asking if the tools might also be useful in areas ranging from high-energy physics to quantum computing [1]. Four research groups now report on using neural network tools to tackle one of the most computationally challenging problems in condensed-matter physics—simulating the behavior of an open many-body quantum system [2–5]. This scenario describes a collection of particles—such as the qubits in a quantum computer—that both interact with each other and exchange energy with their environment. For certain open systems, the new work might allow accurate simulations to be performed with less computer power than existing methods.