https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/08/220810123542.htm

In order to better understand these theories, one possibility is to realize them using artificial and highly controllable quantum systems. This strategy is called quantum simulation and constitutes a special type of quantum computing. It was first proposed by the physicist Richard Feynman in the 80s, more than fifteen years after being awarded the Nobel prize in physics for his pioneering theoretical work on gauge theories. Quantum simulation can be seen as a quantum LEGO game where experimental physicists give reality to abstract theoretical models. They build them in the laboratory "quantum brick by quantum brick," using very well controlled quantum systems such as ultracold atoms or ions. After assembling one quantum LEGO prototype for a specific model, the researchers can measure its properties very precisely in the lab, and use their results to understand better the theory that it mimics. During the last decade, quantum simulation has been intensively exploited to investigate quantum materials. However, playing the quantum LEGO game with gauge theories is fundamentally more challenging. Until now, only the electromagnetic force could be investigated in this way.

In a recent study published in Nature, ICFO experimental researchers Anika Frölian, Craig Chisholm, Ramón Ramos, Elettra Neri, and Cesar Cabrera, led by ICREA Prof. at ICFO Leticia Tarruell, in collaboration with Alessio Celi, a theoretical researcher from the Talent program at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, were able to simulate a gauge theory other than electromagnetism for the first time, using ultracold atoms.