Prof. Freericks publishes an article on partition function zeros and thermodynamics on quantum computers in Science Advances

Prof. Freericks is part of a North Carolina State, University of Maryland and IonQ collaboration that reports the first use of quantum computers to determine partition function zeros. Nobel prize winners Lee and Yang, proposed that the zeros of the quantum statistical partition function, when thought of as a function a complex magnetic field, can determine the thermodynamic properties of the interacting spin system including properties of the phase transition as the temperature is lowered. Fisher extended the work by considering zeros instead as a function of complex temperature. In this new work, Freericks and collaborators showed how one can employ a quantum computer to determine the partition function zeros, using explicit computations on quantum computers at the University of Maryland. This work may ultimately pave the way for using quantum computers to predict phase transitions of quantum systems that cannot be solved on a classical computer.  The article can be found at  https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/34/eabf2447