Quantum dynamics in frustrated Ising fullerenes

The complex energy landscapes exhibited by frustrated magnetic systems undergoing quantum fluctuations are a challenge to accurately simulate, and thus of great interest for testing diverse qubit platforms in the field of quantum simulation. This study experimentally demonstrates quantum fluctuations lifting the degenerate ground-state manifold of classical magnetic configurations in fullerene Ising models with resonating dimers. The interplay between degeneracy and quantum fluctuations makes these boundary-free models well suited as a diagnostic test case for quantum simulators. Indeed, we observe significant performance improvement across generations of superconducting quantum annealers, showing the potential of highly symmetric, frustrated systems for assessing the precision of quantum-simulation technologies.