• Qubits, encoded in the internal states of trapped ions — electrically charged atoms held by electromagnetic fields — represented the gauge fields.
• Quantum oscillators, built from the vibrations of those same ions, represented matter.

From these parts the researchers assembled a minimal loop: two oscillators for matter at two locations, two qubits for the fields connecting them. Small as it was, the loop sufficed to reproduce a key interaction between matter and magnetic flux.

What did entanglement change?

The team placed the two qubits into an entangled quantum state — a linkage between quantum systems that classical physics cannot fully describe. Within the simulation, this entangled state represented magnetic flux threading the loop's center.

The original plan called for the flux to act as a fixed background condition. That approach would have demanded hardware capabilities the team did not have. Encoding the flux directly into the qubits solved the problem — and delivered an unexpected benefit. The flux became part of the evolving quantum system instead of an unchanging external influence.

"For us, the exciting step was to encode the magnetic flux in a gauge field that was itself dynamical," Dr. Saner said. "Rather than having matter evolve in a fixed background, the matter and gauge field become part of the same quantum dynamics."

A technical workaround opened a richer version of the phenomenon, one in which matter and field participate together in the quantum dynamics.

How does an invisible field freeze a particle?

The researchers watched their simulated particle move between locations via quantum tunneling — a process that lets particles jump between states classical rules would forbid. Without magnetic flux, the particle tunneled freely around the loop.

Introducing the simulated flux changed everything. The particle had two possible paths around the loop, and the flux shifted their relative quantum phases. The two paths then interfered destructively: their quantum contributions canceled each other out, completely suppressing the tunneling and leaving the particle frozen in its original state.

That cancellation demonstrated the Aharonov-Bohm effect inside a lattice gauge theory with a dynamical field — not merely a particle circling a fixed magnetic influence.

What comes next?

The Oxford findings appeared alongside a related study from a University of Maryland team led by Professor Norbert Linke, also published in Nature Physics. The Maryland group used a hybrid quantum system to simulate the Yukawa potential, an interaction relevant to nuclear and particle physics. The two groups developed their methods independently and later coordinated their submissions.

Together, the experiments show how hybrid quantum computers — combining qubits and oscillators — can model fundamental interactions that classical simulations struggle to reproduce. One limitation deserves emphasis: the Oxford loop contained just two oscillators and two qubits, a proof of principle rather than a large-scale simulation.

A prediction from 1959 has now run on hardware where the field itself joins the dynamics.