Physicists at the University of Oxford have used a hybrid quantum computer to recreate the Aharonov-Bohm effect, a phenomenon predicted in 1959 in which a particle is influenced by a magnetic field without ever passing through it. The results were published in Nature Physics.
The system combines qubits, stored in ions held by electromagnetic fields, with quantum oscillators created by the vibrations of those same ions. The qubits represent the field and the oscillators represent matter, forming a small closed loop that acts as a basic building block for simulating interactions between matter and fundamental forces.
Without magnetic flux, the simulated particle moved freely around the loop. When the team introduced the flux, using entangled qubits, the two possible paths cancelled each other out and the particle stayed at its starting point. What is new is that the field itself was part of the quantum dynamics, rather than a fixed background.
The work was carried out in collaboration with the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Madrid and was published alongside a similar study from the University of Maryland. Together, they show that hybrid quantum computers could help study fundamental physics that conventional computers struggle to calculate.
