Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), together with international collaborators at Quantinuum and the California Institute of Technology, have demonstrated an important step toward a key future application of quantum computers: the simulation of complex quantum materials beyond the reach of conventional computers.

In the study, published in Nature, the team used Quantinuum’s trapped-ion quantum computer to investigate how interacting quantum particles behave, exchange energy, and eventually reach thermal equilibrium. Such processes are fundamental for understanding magnetic materials, heat transport, and other phenomena that play a key role in modern condensed-matter physics.

What makes the result especially significant is that the quantum simulation reached a regime in which classical computational methods begin to fail. As the complexity of the system grows, even advanced numerical approaches can no longer reliably follow the dynamics over sufficiently long times.

“Our numerical simulations showed very clearly where classical methods start to run out of resources,” says Wilhelm Kadow, PhD student at TUM, who worked on the tensor-network calculations for the project. “This is an exciting indication that quantum computers are moving closer to becoming genuinely useful tools for scientific discovery.”

The work demonstrates that today’s quantum hardware can already tackle highly complex many-body problems that are extremely challenging for conventional computation. It marks an advancement toward practical quantum computing applications in physics, materials science, and beyond.

Research funding acknowledgements

The research was supported, in part, by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy–EXC–2111–390814868, TRR 360 – 492547816, DFG grants No. KN1254/1-2, KN1254/2-1, DFG FOR 5522 Research Unit (project id 499180199), the European Union (grant agreement No 101169765), as well as the Munich Quantum Valley, which is supported by the Bavarian state government with funds from the Hightech Agenda Bayern Plus.

Publication

Digital quantum magnetism on a trapped-ion quantum computer. Reza Haghshenas, Eli Chertkov, Michael Mills, Wilhelm Kadow, Sheng-Hsuan Lin, et al. Nature. doi: 10.1038/s41586-026-10445-3

Contact about the scientific publication

Prof. Dr. Michael Knap
Professor for Collective Quantum Dynamics
Technical University of Munich
TUM School of Natural Sciences
James-Franck-Str. 1, 85748 Garching, Germany
Tel. +49 89 289 53777
michael.knap@ph.tum.de

Prof. Dr. Frank Pollmann
Professorship of Theoretical Solid-State Physics
Technical University of Munich
TUM School of Natural Sciences
James-Franck-Str. 1, 85748 Garching, Germany
Tel.: +49 89 289 53760
frank.pollmann@tum.de

Dr. Michael Foss-Feig
Quantinuum
Michael.Feig@quantinuum.com

Press contact

communications@nat.tum.de 
Team website