For some phenomena in quantum many-body physics, several competing theories exist. But which of them describes a quantum phenomenon best? A team of researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Harvard University in the United States has now successfully deployed artificial neural networks for image analysis of quantum systems.

Is that a dog or a cat? Such a classification is a prime example of machine learning: can be trained to analyze images by looking for patterns that are characteristic of specific objects. Provided the system has learned such patterns, it is able to recognize dogs or cats on any picture.

Using the same principle, neural networks can detect changes in tissue on radiological images. Physicists are now using the method to analyze images—so-called snapshots—of many-body systems and find out which describes the observed phenomena best.

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