How to engineer a quantum wavefunction

Abstract

In a conventional experiment, inductive inferences between source and target systems are typically justified with reference to a uniformity principle between systems of the same material type. In an analogue quantum simulation, by contrast, scientists aim to learn about target quantum systems of one material type via an experiment on a source quantum system of a different material type. In this paper, we argue that such an inference can be justified by reference to the two quantum systems being of the same empirical type. We illustrate this novel experimental practice of wavefunction engineering with reference to the example of Bose-Hubbard systems.