The field of many-body physics seeks to understand how the macroscopic properties of matter emerge from the microscopic behavior of its constituents. While the basic laws that govern the dynamics of a single particle can often be simple, the collective motion of ensembles of interacting particles can become rather complex and often leads to emergent phenomena that go far beyond the properties of each individual particle. Such effects, for example, give rise to the different states of matter (gaseous, fluid, solid) or can determine the color by which an object appears to our eyes, but also lead to more exotic quantum phenomena, such as superconductivity or superfluidity.

Solving the quantum mechanical equations of motion for a large number of interacting particles fundamentally exceeds to capabilities of current supercomputers, such that finding clever approximations and ways to unravel essential governing mechanisms represents a major aim and exciting challenge for research in many-body theory. The development of quantum technologies promises a new solution based on quantum simulations, that use an experimentally well controllable quantum system (such as cold atoms or ions) to simulate an otherwise intractable many-body problem.