Scientists led by the Duke Quantum Center have successfully used a quantum simulator to observe string breaking dynamics and particle-antiparticle formation, according to findings published September 23 in Nature Physics. The experiment represents one of the earliest demonstrations of this phenomenon in quantum physics and suggests that trapped ion quantum computers may serve as powerful tools for investigating fundamental questions in physics.
String breaking occurs when two connected building blocks of matter are pulled apart until sufficient energy accumulates to create new particles that effectively “pop into existence” when the connection breaks. Quarks, among the most fundamental components of matter, normally remain tightly bound together inside particles such as protons and neutrons. The farther apart quarks are pulled, the more energy is stored in the connection between them. According to Einstein’s equation E=mc², enough accumulated energy can generate additional charged particle pairs. Such processes typically require extreme conditions, such as those found inside the Large Hadron Collider or believed to have existed immediately following the Big Bang.
The international research team, including collaborators from the University of Maryland, Oxford University, California Institute of Technology, Cornell University, and KU Leuven, encoded a string breaking model into a chain of 13 trapped ions. Carefully controlled laser beams were used to adjust how the ions interacted with one another, allowing researchers to control the system’s energy and reproduce the stretching and eventual breaking of a particle-like string. The team prepared the system in an out-of-equilibrium state and tracked how it changed over time, detecting the appearance of effective charges and reconstructing the dynamics associated with the simulated string breaking process.
The results were verified through classical computer modeling, which produced calculations consistent with the experimental findings from the quantum simulator. While classical computers can currently handle simulations at this relatively small scale, researchers anticipate that as future experiments become larger and more complex, quantum computers will eventually solve problems beyond the capabilities of conventional machines. Similar milestones have recently been achieved by teams using different quantum hardware platforms, including Google with superconducting circuits and QuEra Computing with neutral atoms, providing useful benchmarks for the quantum computing community.
The research represents progress toward quantum simulations too complex for even the world’s most powerful supercomputers. If quantum systems continue to scale up, researchers could eventually investigate questions difficult or impossible to reproduce directly in laboratories, including how matter behaved and evolved shortly after the Big Bang.
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