Two theoretical physicists in Japan have tested their predictions about quantum tunnelling by running experiments on a Bose-Einstein condensate located thousands of kilometres away in the United States, using a cloud-based platform operated by the quantum-technology company Infleqtion. Ippei Danshita of Kindai University and Daichi Kagamihara of Chuo University described the work and its implications in a conversation for the Physics World Weekly podcast.
The remote experiments were carried out on Oqtant, Infleqtion's cloud-accessible Bose-Einstein condensate system. Rather than building or borrowing laboratory hardware, the researchers controlled the apparatus from Japan and used it to probe how anomalous tunnelling affects the collective excitations of a BEC — the coordinated, wave-like motions that emerge when ultracold atoms behave as a single quantum entity.
The team, together with colleagues, reported the results in a paper titled «Observation of the influence of anomalous tunneling on collective excitations via a cloud experiment platform for Bose–Einstein condensates». The title reflects the central claim: that the tunnelling behaviour predicted by theory leaves a measurable signature on how the condensate's collective modes behave.
Bose-Einstein condensates are among the most sensitive systems available for testing quantum mechanics. Formed when atoms are cooled to near absolute zero, they allow researchers to observe quantum effects on scales large enough to manipulate and measure. Tunnelling — the ability of particles to pass through barriers they classically should not cross — is a foundational quantum phenomenon, and its anomalous variants are of particular interest to theorists because they can alter the dynamics of an entire condensate rather than a single particle.
What makes the study notable is its method as much as its result. Cloud-based quantum platforms are emerging as a way for researchers without direct access to specialised ultracold-atom laboratories to run real experiments. For theorists such as Danshita and Kagamihara, the arrangement offered a route from prediction to observation without the cost and infrastructure of maintaining a BEC facility.
The two researchers also discussed how the remote-control process works in practice and whether they intend to pursue further experimental work in the future. Their willingness to move from theory into experiment suggests that cloud platforms may encourage a more fluid exchange between the two sides of physics, with theorists able to validate their models directly rather than waiting for an experimental group to take up the question.
The approach does not replace dedicated laboratories, but it lowers a barrier that has long separated theoretical work on ultracold quantum systems from the data needed to confirm it. If the model holds, remotely operated condensates could become a routine tool for testing ideas about tunnelling, collective behaviour and other many-body quantum effects — with the apparatus sitting in one country and the researchers in another.
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