Quantum simulator for the Ising model with electrons floating on a helium film

Sarah Mostame, Ralf Schützhold

Published 2008-03-07, updated 2008-06-16Version 2

We propose a physical setup that can be used to simulate the quantum dynamics of the Ising model with present-day technology. Our scheme consists of electrons floating on superfluid helium which interact via Coulomb forces. In the limit of low temperatures, the system will stay near the ground state where its Hamiltonian is equivalent to the Ising model and thus shows phenomena such as quantum criticality. Furthermore, the proposed design could be generalized in order to study interacting field theories (e.g., $\lambda\phi^4$) and adiabatic quantum computers.