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The superfluid-to-Mott insulator transition and the birth of experimental quantum simulation

In 2002, an experiment with ultracold atoms emulated a textbook condensed-matter physics phenomenon: the phase transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator. Two decades later, two of the researchers involved in that milestone experiment ponder how far quantum simulation with ultracold atoms has come.

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Fig. 1: Quantum simulation of the superfluid-to-Mott insulator transition.

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Correspondence to Immanuel Bloch.

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Bloch, I., Greiner, M. The superfluid-to-Mott insulator transition and the birth of experimental quantum simulation. Nat Rev Phys 4, 739–740 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-022-00520-9

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