Quantum mechanics poses significant challenges for visual representation, particularly concerning quantum entanglement.
Our research investigates sonification techniques applied to dynamical entanglement generation in many-qubit systems. Specifically, we study dynamics governed by four models: the one-axis twisting model, the two-axis counter twisting model, the XXZ Heisenberg model and a quantum kicked-rotor exhibiting both regular and quantum chaotic behavior.
We are convinced that sonification can offer a valuable, complementary approach in the representation of such complex quantum systems.
— Juliette Tudoce, Marcin Płodzień, Maciej Lewenstein and Reiko Yamada
From a quantum point of view:
Fundamental, microscopic description of reality requires using formalism of quantum mechanics, where quantum states describing properties of a given system live in a highly-dimensional vector Hilbert space.
Quantum theory predicts phenomena which do not have classical counterparts. These phenomena are manifested in quantum correlations, such as entanglement and Bell correlations, which are fundamental features of many-qubit systems. (Horodecki 2009)
The First Quantum Revolution in the XXth century was related to reformulating our understanding of reality in the light of consequences of fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics prediction. Three decades ago, we entered the Second Quantum Revolution, since experimental techniques allow for precise preparation and control of quantum systems. The high level of control over the quantum dynamics allows to generate, and store quantum states possessing quantum correlations, utilized later for information processing. These quantum correlations are fundamental resources for future quantum-based technologies, namely quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum simulation, and quantum sensing (Altman 2021, Osada 2022, Fraxanet 2023, Simon 2025).
From a musical point of view:
Over the recent years, next to fundamental research on quantum theory, as well to research on quantum-based technologies, quantum mechanics attracts the interest of the artist community. From an artistic point of view, one of the main challenges is to provide an audio-visual representation of quantum phenomena. Quantum mechanical concepts are well defined in the proper mathematical framework, however, they are hard to understand at the level of everyday intuition - as they do not have any classical counterpart. Nevertheless, in the field of computer music, and by extension electroacoustics, there is a constant effort to build the route allowing to travel from formal mathematical language of quantum mechanics, to audio-visual interpretation of non-classical reality (Miranda 2025).
The human auditory system excels at recognizing patterns, temporal structures, and subtle variations over time, making sonification a powerful tool for interpreting intricate datasets. Sonification provides a route for rendering otherwise abstract physical processes—including quantum phenomena—into audible form. As Kramer et al. (1999) put it, “Sonification is the transformation of data relationships into perceived relationships in an acoustic signal for the purpose of facilitating communication or interpretation” (Kramer 1999). Although the technique is not new—the clicking Geiger–Müller counter dates to 1908—its adoption in complex scientific domains has grown markedly over the past few decades (Flowers 1995, Cooke 2017, Scaletti 2018).
In the field of quantum physics, sonification remains relatively underexplored in scientific contributions. Over the past thirty years, sonification has been applied to a variety of single particle quantum problems, including particle motion based on de Broglie’s hypothesis (Sturm 2001), Gaussian wave packets in potential wells (Cádiz 2014), quantum oscillators (DuPlessis 2021, Yamada 2023), and molecular electronic energy densities in quantum chemistry (Arasaki 2024).