Institute for Quantum Information Seminar

Frustration, or the competition between interacting components of a network, is often responsible for the complexity of many body systems. In quantum magnetic systems, frustration arises naturally from competing spin-spin interactions given by the geometry of the spin lattice or by the presence of long-range antiferromagnetic couplings. I will describe work using a trapped atomic ion quantum simulator to simulate strongly-coupled, frustrated quantum systems with up to 16 spins. We control the amount of frustration in the system by continuously tuning the range of an antiferromagnetic coupling in a linear spin chain, and we examine the dynamics and magnetism of the system as it crosses the critical point. In the future, quantum simulations such as these may to shed light on universal behavior of many-body systems in the quantum regime.