UMass Amherst theoretical physicists find a way to simulate strongly correlated fermions

Combining known factors in a new way, theoretical physicists Boris Svistunov and Nikolai Prokof’ev at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with three alumni of their group, have solved an intractable 50-year-old problem: How to simulate strongly interacting quantum systems to allow accurate predictions of their properties. It could open the door to practical superconductor applications, as well as to solving difficult "many-body" problems in high-energy physics, condensed matter and ultra-cold atoms. The theoretical breakthrough by Prokof’ev and Svistunov at UMass Amherst, with their alumni Kris Van Houcke now at Ghent University, Felix Werner at Ecole Normale Superieure Paris and Evgeny Kozik at Ecole Polytechnique, is reported in the current issue of Nature Physics. The paper also includes crucial results of an experimental validation conducted by Martin Zwierlein and colleagues at MIT.