Engineering topological states in atom-based semiconductor quantum dots.

The realization of controllable fermionic quantum systems via quantum simulation is instrumental for exploring many of the most intriguing effects in condensed-matter physics. Semiconductor quantum dots are particularly promising for quantum simulation as they can be engineered to achieve strong quantum correlations. However, although simulation of the Fermi-Hubbard model and Nagaoka ferromagnetism have been reported before, the simplest one-dimensional model of strongly correlated topological matter, the many-body Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model, has so far remained elusive-mostly owing to the challenge of precisely engineering long-range interactions between electrons to reproduce the chosen Hamiltonian.