Credit: Yale University Researchers at Yale, Google, and the University of California-Santa Barbara have created a device that simulates the quantum "tunneling" behavior of protons that occurs in chemistry, a process so common it occurs in everything from photosynthesis to the formation of human DNA. The advance has the potential to aid researchers across a variety of disciplines, including the development of new solar fuels, pharmaceuticals, and materials. It is described in a new study in the journal PRX Quantum . Quantum tunneling is a mechanism by which particles, such as electrons or protons, pass through an energy barrier they should not have sufficient energy to cross. "Our system is so clean and controllable that we could resolve very subtle quantum tunneling effects with it that were unknown to us," said co-first author Rodrigo Cortiñas, a former Yale postdoctoral researcher who is now at Google Quantum AI in Santa Barbara, California.…