2/9/2026
University of Illinois researchers have developed a new method to simulate fundamental physics with a quantum computer. The type of quantum computer in this study uses atoms as its most basic components of computation. The researchers’ computing technique leverages the properties of a particular kind of atom to increase the computer’s working memory. Their work was published in PRX Quantum.
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Written by Madeline Stover
University of Illinois researchers have developed a new method to simulate fundamental physics with a quantum computer. The type of quantum computer in this study uses atoms as its most basic components of computation. The researchers’ computing technique leverages the properties of a particular kind of atom to increase the computer’s working memory.
“Simulating the real-time dynamics of quarks and gluons, and nuclear matter in extreme environments, are among the most promising applications of quantum computing to fundamental physics,” says Illinois Physics Associate Professor Patrick Draper. Quarks are fundamental particles that make up protons and neutrons and gluons are elementary particles that act as force carriers.
The Illinois Physics research team: Assistant Professor Jacob Covey, Draper, graduate student Cianan Conefrey-Shinozaki, graduate student Will Huie, and postdoctoral fellow Zhubing Jia published their work in PRX Quantum.
Particle physicists study fundamental particles and forces to uncover a set of universal laws that govern the physical world–from the quantum realm to the cosmos. Innovations from particle physics that impact our daily lives include MRIs and PET scans, cleaning up dirty drinking water, and shrinking tumors.
However, these most basic particles and forces can only be teased out individually at extremely high energy levels–comparable to the energy of one billion tons of dynamite. At lower energy levels, similar to what we experience in our everyday lives, these fundamental particles and forces are bound into larger-scale matter, like chairs, cars, and cats.
Some experiments on Earth–particle colliders–approach the energy levels at which we can study fundamental particles, and we have learned much about our universe from these experiments. However, the timeline for the next generation of particle colliders is around 50 to 70 years, so to push the boundaries of particle physics, researchers are turning to quantum computing.
“We might be seeing new interesting emergent multibody behavior on the quantum computer before we see it on the collider,” says Conefrey-Shinozaki.
Simulating particle physics is not efficient on even the most modern, high-performance classical computers. For example, it would take the memory of about a million laptops to simulate 50 quantum particles. Further, there are inherent roadblocks to modeling fundamental physics on classical computers because the world of particles is quantum in nature. However, a quantum computer can both capture these quantum phenomena and meet the memory needs of the simulation.
The main difference between a quantum computer and a classical computer is that a classical computer uses bits–0s and 1s–and a quantum computer uses qubits–a state of being both 0 and 1 simultaneously. There are many ways to make a qubit, but the Covey lab specializes in making qubits from atoms.
An atom can be thought of as a big ball of quantum states, and typically, to make a qubit from an atom you want to restrict the available states to two–0 and 1. In the lab, scientists can prepare states by using lasers to trap and then energize the atom.
However, to simulate the behavior of fundamental particles, the researchers needed more working memory on the quantum computer. To achieve this, they combined three qubits into a single atom.
The first qubit comes from the possible states that the electron orbiting the nucleus can occupy. It can either be in a low-energy orbit–the ground state–or a higher-energy orbit–the excited state. Quantum particles also have a property called spin, which can be in either the up state or the down state. The nucleus of this atom can be either spin up or spin down, and this is the second qubit.
A quantum law called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle prevents trapped atoms being held completely stationary, so the atom is moving around in the trap with different vibrational modes. These vibrational modes are analogous to the different ways that a guitar sting can vibrate. Two two different modes make up the third qubit. This sums up to three qubits or eight total possible ways to store information on one atom, as opposed to two possible states in a typical qubit, leading to a larger working memory.
For this experiment, the three-qubit particle is simulated on a classical computer, with the ultimate goal being to create the physical atom in the Covey lab.
Developing the algorithm that would drive this computer simulation–which implements the set of rules for how the fundamental particles behave–was a true collaboration between Conefrey-Shinozaki, with a particle physics background, and Huie, who constructed the high-memory quantum computer. Both wrote algorithms independently and then merged them.
“It was a back and forth between what the particle physics needs and what the atoms can do,” says Huie.
Once the algorithm was prepared the team was ready to simulate high energy physics. In this idealized model, particles are placed on a line and can move in one spatial dimension and evolve in time. In this simulation, particles resembled real quarks–constituent particles of protons and neutrons–without spin or another quantum property called flavor.
After running this simulation, they found that the observed particle dynamics matched expectations from theory.
It was rewarding for Conefrey-Shinozaki, a theorist used to working on blackboards, to see physical manifestations of particle physics. “For me, it was exciting to see string-breaking–a behavior of fundamental particles only seen at high energies–in real time,” says Conefrey-Shinozaki.
The next step for the team is to build the high-memory quantum computer in the lab and collect data with physical atoms, now that the proof-of-concept has been successful.
This work also has broader implications for the field of quantum computing–a field that will revolutionize digital security and has the potential to significantly improve certain medical diagnoses.
“The prospect of putting multiple qubits into one particle is nice if you are trying to do something that’s really memory intensive, as in it needs a lot of qubits,” says Huie. Huie also notes that the ability to do multiple operations on a single particle leads to less errors in the computation than if the operations were spread out amongst multiple particles. Compressing multiple operations onto one particle could support quantum computing that is easier to scale up for everyday use.
Looking ahead, Conefrey-Shinozaki is optimistic about the future of particle physics, “I think quantum computing is the future of stimulating these subtle many-body phenomena.”
Jacob Covey is Illinois Grainger Engineering assistant professor in the Department of Physics. He is affiliated with the Materials Research Laboratory and the Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center.
Patrick Draper is an Illinois Grainger Engineering associate professor in the Department of Physics. He is affiliated with the Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center, the IBM-Illinois Discovery Accelerator Institute, and the Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe.