Topological order in superconducting circuits
Quantum many-body systems can be largely determined by their topological properties, that is they behave markedly different depending whether they for example can thought of covering the surface of a doughnut or a sphere. This insight has led to the Nobel prize in physics in 2016 being awarded to the three British scientists Michael Kosterlitz, David Thouless and Duncan Haldane.
In this work, Dr. Hartmann and his research team in IPaQS show that the celebrated toric code model, which was introduced by Alexey Kitaev in 1997, and is of central importance to topological order in quantum information and condensed matter physics can be implemented in lattices of superconducting circuits.