Ion trap based system forms an ideal setting for simulating interactions in quantum spin models.[17] A trapped-ion simulator, built by a team that included the NIST can engineer and control interactions among hundreds of quantum bits (qubits).[18] Previous endeavors were unable to go beyond 30 quantum bits. The capability of this simulator is 10 times more than previous devices. It has passed a series of important benchmarking tests that indicate a capability to solve problems in material science that are impossible to model on conventional computers.

The trapped-ion simulator consists of a tiny, single-plane crystal of hundreds of beryllium ions, less than 1 millimeter in diameter, hovering inside a device called a Penning trap. The outermost electron of each ion acts as a tiny quantum magnet and is used as a qubit, the quantum equivalent of a “1” or a “0” in a conventional computer. In the benchmarking experiment, physicists used laser beams to cool the ions to near absolute zero. Carefully timed microwave and laser pulses then caused the qubits to interact, mimicking the quantum behavior of materials otherwise very difficult to study in the laboratory. Although the two systems may outwardly appear dissimilar, their behavior is engineered to be mathematically identical. In this way, simulators allow researchers to vary parameters that couldn’t be changed in natural solids, such as atomic lattice spacing and geometry.