Stirring the false vacuum via interacting quantized bubbles on a 5,564-qubit quantum annealer

False-vacuum decay is a non-perturbative process that is difficult to access experimentally. This study uses Jülich’s D-Wave quantum annealer as a large-scale quantum simulator to observe the real-time formation and interaction of quantized true-vacuum bubbles in a ferromagnetic quantum Ising model. Using 5,564 superconducting flux qubits, the researchers identify coherent scaling behaviour and follow many-body dynamics over long intrinsic timescales, demonstrating how quantum annealers can be used to investigate complex phenomena relevant to quantum field theory.