A quantum simulator mimics a real magnet ⚡ экспресс
What’s inside a magnet? Scientists used a quantum simulator made of 256 atoms to recreate the behavior of a real crystal, TmMgGaO₄. It turned out that the disorder there comes not from impurities but from quantum jitters—like a coin that refuses to land on heads or tails until you look at it. And what if you force such a magnet to abruptly change its conditions?
A three-seat swing never stops: one rider is always left hanging. That’s a frustrated magnet—a perpetual dance with no rest. To study it, physicists built a quantum simulator from 256 atoms, meticulously mimicking the crystal TmMgGaO₄.
The simulator showed the same magnetic behavior as the real material. But the big surprise—in the twilight zone between order and chaos, it’s not crystal defects but quantum jitters that rule. Moreover, when the simulator was given a sudden jolt, it evened out its temperature in trillionths of a second. This process comes with an explosive growth of entanglement—and just as dramatically, entropy surged.
So this quantum doppelgänger doesn’t just copy reality—it peers into its most fleeting moments, where ordinary computers are powerless.
🎯 The natural mineral Herbstite is a real frustrated magnet: when cooled, its magnetic moments flow like a liquid even though the crystal stays solid.