Key Points
When quantum particles such as atoms interact, they shed their individual identities in favor of a collective state thats greater, and weirder, than the sum of its parts..
Researchers need to first develop specific procedures, or algorithms, that quantum computers can use to answer your questions.. Ewin Tang helped devise a new fast algorithm for simulating how certain quantum systems behave at high temperatures...
To understand where quantum algorithms and the computers that can run them might offer an advantage, researchers often analyze mathematical models called spin systems, which capture the basic behavior of arrays of interacting atoms..
The only things that matter are the details of the interactions between nearby atoms.. lvaro Alhambra, a physicist working on the same problem as Tang, Moitra, Bakshi, and Liu, realized they had accidentally proved a new result about quantum entanglement while developing their algorithm...
The four researchers proof that high-temperature spin systems lack any entanglement helps explain another interesting feature of their new algorithm: Very little of it is actually quantum..
