A neutral-atom Hubbard quantum simulator in the cryogenic regime

Ultracold fermionic atoms in optical lattices offer pristine realizations of Hubbard models1, which are fundamental to modern condensed-matter physics2,3. Despite notable advancements4–6, the accessible temperatures in these optical lattice material analogues are still too high to address many open problems7–10. Here we demonstrate a several-fold reduction in temperature6,11–13, bringing large-scale quantum simulations of the Hubbard model into an entirely new regime. This is accomplished by transforming a low-entropy product state into strongly correlated states of interest via dynamic control of the model parameters14,15, which is extremely challenging to simulate classically10. At half-filling, the long-range antiferromagnetic order is close to saturation, leading to a temperature of $$T/t=0.0{5}_{-0.05}^{+0.06}$$ T / t = 0.0 5 − 0.05 + 0.06 based on comparisons with numerically exact simulations. Doped away from half-filling, it is exceedingly challenging to realize systematically accurate and predictive numerical simulations9. Importantly, we are able to use quantum simulation to identify a new pathway for achieving similarly low temperatures with doping. This is confirmed by comparing short-range spin correlations to state-of-the-art, but approximate, constrained-path auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo simulations16–18. Compared with the cuprates2,19,20, the reported temperatures correspond to a reduction from far above to below room temperature, at which physics such as the pseudogap and stripe phases may be expected3,19,21–24. Our work opens the door to quantum simulations that solve open questions in material science, develop synergies with numerical methods and theoretical studies, and lead to discoveries of new physics8,10.