I am interested in understanding the quantum behaviors of many particles. When we measure individual atoms from our quantum simulator, we can distill the information necessary for analyzing the complex many-body dynamics.  Specifically, in order to claim that we built an actual quantum simulator, we need to verify if we really have quantumness, such as quantum coherence and entanglement, in our system.  We do that by benchmarking our experimental data against the predicted behavior that we see in an ideal quantum model.  After benchmarking, we know how much fidelity we have achieved in our quantum system.  The measured fidelity from experiments guides us in how to improve fidelity by changing laser properties or making atoms more stabilized.  If we can verify and demonstrate high fidelity in our system on an intermediate scale, then we will have high confidence that our system will behave as expected even on a large scale where theoretical predictions become intractable.

There are a lot of interesting quantum theories that encourage us to develop these robust quantum systems in experiment that simulate quantum phenomena in complex matter.  In a practical sense, people are hoping to discover a new drug or use these systems in cryptography and information security. Since we cannot easily predict things in this large-scale regime anymore, this is an exciting regime, and we need new theories to open up large possibilities in both our theoretical understanding and experiences.