Researchers in Australia have unveiled the largest quantum simulation platform built to date, opening a new route to exploring the complex behavior of quantum materials at unprecedented scales.
Reporting in Nature, a team led by Michelle Simmons at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney has demonstrated a platform they call “Quantum Twins”: a two-dimensional array of around 15,000 individually controllable quantum dots. The researchers say the system could soon be used to simulate a wide range of exotic quantum effects that emerge in large, strongly correlated materials.
As quantum technologies advance, it is becoming increasingly important to understand how advanced quantum materials behave under different conditions.
Although these behaviors can be modeled using conventional computers, these simulations quickly become unmanageable as systems grow larger. Because the underlying physics is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, it is often far more efficient to simulate these properties using quantum systems themselves.
Limits of current quantum simulators
To date, researchers have pursued this idea using platforms including ultracold atoms, superconducting circuits, and misaligned stacks of atom-thin crystals. However, imperfections in structures, along with random fluctuations caused by heating and difficulties in calibration, have so far limited how far these approaches can be scaled up.
As a result, researchers have struggled to reproduce large quantum systems, where behaviors are dominated by intricate webs of entanglement between many particles.
Building the Quantum Twins platform
To overcome these limitations, Simmons’ team explored the potential of atom-based quantum dots: semiconductor structures just a few nanometers across that can confine a single electron. Crucially, the quantum state of that electron can be precisely controlled using external fields.
In their approach, the researchers fabricated quantum dots by embedding individual phosphorus atoms into silicon chips, arranging them into a large, perfectly ordered square grid. Each dot emulates the position of an atom in a two-dimensional quantum material, while still allowing tight control over the quantum state of every electron.
The resulting Quantum Twins platform contains around 15,000 quantum dots, making it the largest quantum simulation platform demonstrated to date.
Probing metal–insulator transitions
To validate the system, the team tuned two fundamental parameters. The first was quantum tunneling, which determines how easily electrons can hop between neighboring dots. The second was the on-site interaction, describing how strongly electrons repel each other when they occupy the same site.
By carefully adjusting the balance between these properties, the researchers simulated a metal–insulator transition: a process in which a material switches from a metal, where electrons move freely through the lattice, to an insulator, where motion is suppressed by strong quantum correlations.
Future applications and quantum frontiers
Following this successful first demonstration, the team is confident that Quantum Twins could be used to simulate a broad range of large-scale quantum phenomena. These include unconventional and potentially room-temperature superconductivity, where electrical currents flow with almost no resistance.
The platform could also be used to study interfaces between different quantum materials, with possible applications ranging from drug discovery to designing materials that mimic the highly efficient energy-harvesting processes of photosynthesis.
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Publication details
M. B. Donnelly et al, Large-scale analogue quantum simulation using atom dot arrays, Nature (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-10053-7
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