A video game to understand the phenomena of quantum physics

The strategies implemented by players within video games may offer scientists a new view of certain phenomena of quantum physics, according to a new article published in Nature. The article refers to a video game developed by Jacob Sherson Danish Aarhus University, whose first version dates back to 2012 but has now been adapted to the latest computer systems.

In Quantum Moves players must guide the atoms trapped inside photonic crystals using laser. The goal is to find the quickest ways to handle and transfer the atoms in question: in short, the human intuition of the camera may be able to solve problems much more quickly than they would in traditional algorithms that proceed by trial and error .

Faced with a time limit, players must carry the quantum material fact in order to deposit it in a designated area, avoiding obstacles and therefore losing the street of the material. As with any good strategy game, the best way to proceed is readily apparent: it is better to move constantly but slowly and take small snags such as not to disperse the quantum material?

For more than two years at Aarhus University researchers tracked the behavior of Quantum Moves players and now admit that the best players' strategies have proven more effective than the scientists strategies. "The players have identified fundamentally different strategies than those that may arise from the mind of a trained scientist quantum physics," said physicist Jacob Friis Sherson, the study's co-author. Overall the game has been tried at least 500,000 times from about 10,000 players.

The Aarhus scientists hope to use the results collected in terms of the development of architecture of future quantum computers, which operate on the basis of principles similar to those simulated by Quantum Moves.