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.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles
$99.00 per year
only $8.25 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Jaksch, D. et al. Cold bosonic atoms in optical lattices. Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 3108 (1998).
Greiner, M. et al. Quantum phase transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator in a gas of ultracold atoms. Nature 415, 39–44 (2002).
Feynman, R. P. Simulating physics with computers. Int. J. Theor. Phys. 21, 467–488 (1982).
Fisher, M. P. A. et al. Boson localization and the superfluid-insulator transition. Phys. Rev. B 40, 546 (1989).
Bakr, W. S. et al. Probing the superfluid-to-Mott-insulator transition at the single-atom level. Science 329, 547–550 (2010).
Sherson, J. et al. Single-atom-resolved fluorescence imaging of an atomic Mott insulator. Nature 467, 68–72 (2010).
Weitenberg, C. et al. Single-spin addressing in an atomic Mott insulator. Nature 471, 319–324 (2011).
Esslinger, T. Fermi–Hubbard physics with atoms in an optical lattice. Annu. Rev. Cond. Mat. Phys. 1, 129–152 (2010).
Daley, A. J. et al. Practical quantum advantage in quantum simulation. Nature 607, 667–676 (2022).
Bloch, I. Ultracold quantum gases in optical lattices. Nat. Phys. 1, 23–30 (2005).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
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
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-022-00520-9
This article is cited by
-
Twenty-five years of analogue quantum simulation
Nature Reviews Physics (2023)