How an ancient board game could unlock cutting-edge physics discoveries

The sport mancala might have originated way back to 6000 BCE in Jordan and is performed world wide to this present day. It consists of stones that gamers transfer between a collection of small pits on a wood sport board. The purpose of the sport is to get all of the stones into the final pit on the finish of the board.

In a brand new examine revealed in AVS Quantum Science, researchers at Tulane College apply a modified solitaire model of mancala, which they name ManQala, to quantum state engineering, a area of quantum physics that offers with placing quantum methods into particular states.

The central drawback quantum state engineering is making an attempt to unravel, mentioned Ryan Glasser, affiliate professor of physics on the College of Science and Engineering, is “what do I have to do to get my quantum system to be within the state I want?” Primarily, researchers have to know the best way to get particles to be in sure locations or have sure energies with a purpose to examine them and to make use of quantum computer systems.

That is tougher with quantum particles than it's with, for example, the stones on a mancala board. “Quantum issues are, typically talking, very delicate and tough to regulate,” mentioned Glasser. “The system can crumble shortly and make you lose any quantum benefit you may have or want to have.”

Quantum physicists have already got just a few strategies to unravel these issues, however the simulations researchers did on this examine confirmed that ManQala is more practical, even in easier methods. “We see benefits already, even in these simplified methods of three stones and three pits,” mentioned Glasser.

This examine is considered one of many within the area of quantum video games, which is “successfully taking regular video games like sudoku or checkers or tic-tac-toe and making use of guidelines of quantum physics to them and seeing what attention-grabbing issues would possibly occur,” mentioned Glasser. When coping with quantum particles quite than bodily stones, there's the chance for the particles to intrude with one another when they're in neighboring “pits.” Which means there are extra strikes out there, and for ManQala, not less than, “you may win the sport should you use quantum guidelines the place you wouldn’t have the ability to should you use classical guidelines,” Glasser mentioned.

Though this examine centered on simulations, Glasser is optimistic about future functions of ManQala. “It’s within the realm of concept at the moment, however I feel it’s positively doable experimentally,” mentioned Glasser. He hopes to use ManQala to the IBM Quantum cloud laptop, which he has used for analysis up to now, together with fellow researchers Thomas Searles of the College of Illinois Chicago and Brian Kirby, an adjunct professor of physics at Tulane.