Twisting elusive quantum particles with a quantum computer: Quantum processor provides insights into exotic states of matter

While the number of qubits and the stability of quantum states are still limiting current quantum computing devices, there are questions where these processors are already able to leverage their enormous computing power. Scientists used a quantum processor to simulate the ground state of a so-called toric code Hamiltonian -- an archetypical model system in modern condensed matter physics, which was originally proposed in the context of quantum error correction.