Scientists Find a Fast Way to Describe Quantum Systems
Physicists have done a remarkable job explaining the chaos of the universe with well-behaved equations, but certain situations remain mysterious. Among these are collections of many tiny particles — they can be atoms, electrons, anything sufficiently small — that interact in surprising and complicated ways. These interactions give rise to exotic quantum phenomena including superconductivity (in which materials conduct electricity without losing energy), superfluidity (the frictionless flow of a fluid) and topological order (where particles interact according to a strict choreography).
Theoretically, there is a way to understand these various behaviors, a kind of super equation unique to each quantum system that can fully describe the system’s physical properties. Unfortunately, real-life systems are so complicated that it’s often impossible to write down this equation, called a Hamiltonian, ahead of time.
Instead, researchers have become experts at the inverse problem: If we can measure the properties of a given system, can we deduce its Hamiltonian?
