  Numerical simulations of numerous quantum systems suffer from the notorious
sign problem. Important examples include QCD and other field theories at
non-zero chemical potential, at non-zero vacuum angle, or with an odd number of
flavors, as well as the Hubbard model for high-temperature superconductivity
and quantum antiferromagnets in an external magnetic field. In all these cases
standard simulation algorithms require an exponentially large statistics in
large space-time volumes and are thus impossible to use in practice.
Meron-cluster algorithms realize a general strategy to solve severe sign
problems but must be constructed for each individual case. They lead to a
complete solution of the sign problem in several of the above cases.
