Quantum Dynamics on a Laptop

Traditionally, modeling these systems has required supercomputers or even artificial intelligence.

But a new approach developed by UB physicists may soon allow researchers to run many of these complex simulations on an ordinary laptop.

The team has expanded a method known as the truncated Wigner approximation, or TWA—a sort of physics shortcut that simplifies unwieldy quantum calculations. Their advance extends TWA beyond its traditional use in idealized, closed quantum systems to messier, real-world scenarios where energy can be lost to the environment.

Physicists looking to use TWA typically face a daunting technical barrier: They must derive problem-specific equations before running any simulations. The researchers overcame that hurdle by creating a user-friendly TWA template. Instead of pages of dense mathematics, the new method provides a straightforward conversion table that translates a quantum problem into solvable equations.

With this framework, researchers can plug in the terms and parameters of their quantum system and obtain usable results in hours. According to the team, physicists can learn the method in one day and begin running highly complex problems by day three.

The hope is that this streamlined approach will save supercomputers and AI models for the truly complicated quantum systems—those with not just a trillion possible states but more states than there are atoms in the universe.

“A lot of what appears complicated isn’t actually complicated,” says Jamir Marino, assistant professor of physics and the study’s corresponding author. “Physicists can use supercomputing resources on the systems that need a full-fledged quantum approach and solve the rest quickly with our approach.”