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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.

(PhysOrg.com) -- If a practical quantum computer is ever to be realized, conventional electronic devices will have to interface with the delicate quantum systems such as atoms or ions in traps or wisps of magnetism near superconducting sensors.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Light has its limitations – in this case not velocity, but rather its diffraction limit, which determines the spatial interaction volume in all implementations of optical spectroscopy and is in general also valid for time-resolved studies.

Editor's note (6/1/2011): We are making the text of this July 1985 article freely available for 30 days to coincide with the publication of a paper on entropy and quantum systems by Vlatko Vedral. He authored our June 2011 cover story and blogs about his latest work , which discusses the research featured in this 1985 article. A computation, whether it is performed by electronic machinery, on an abacus or in a biological system such as the brain, is a physical process

Do the principles of quantum mechanics apply to biological systems?