44
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Quantum simulation of frustrated Ising spins with trapped ions.

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPubMed
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          A network is frustrated when competing interactions between nodes prevent each bond from being satisfied. This compromise is central to the behaviour of many complex systems, from social and neural networks to protein folding and magnetism. Frustrated networks have highly degenerate ground states, with excess entropy and disorder even at zero temperature. In the case of quantum networks, frustration can lead to massively entangled ground states, underpinning exotic materials such as quantum spin liquids and spin glasses. Here we realize a quantum simulation of frustrated Ising spins in a system of three trapped atomic ions, whose interactions are precisely controlled using optical forces. We study the ground state of this system as it adiabatically evolves from a transverse polarized state, and observe that frustration induces extra degeneracy. We also measure the entanglement in the system, finding a link between frustration and ground-state entanglement. This experimental system can be scaled to simulate larger numbers of spins, the ground states of which (for frustrated interactions) cannot be simulated on a classical computer.

          Related collections

          Author and article information

          Journal
          Nature
          Nature
          Springer Science and Business Media LLC
          1476-4687
          0028-0836
          Jun 03 2010
          : 465
          : 7298
          Affiliations
          [1 ] Joint Quantum Institute, University of Maryland Department of Physics and National Institute of Standards and Technology, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA. khkim@umd.edu
          Article
          nature09071
          10.1038/nature09071
          20520708
          bfd1336e-5181-420f-b118-c4210007f650
          History

          Comments

          Comment on this article