Systems of importance to nuclear physics research span an enormous range of length scales and conditions, from low-viscosity liquids of quarks and gluons in the earliest moments of our universe, through the structure and interactions of nuclei, through to the behavior of matter created in the merger of neutron stars.
Classical high-performance computing plays an essential role in calculating the properties of these systems, and remarkable progress is expected to be witnessed during the exascale era that is now upon us. Some of the Grand Challenge problems facing nuclear physics require multi-exascale computational resources, particularly medium-to-high density systems and dynamical systems. This led us to consider that we may be encountering the first signs of the limits of classical computations in our field, and to return to Feynman's point of view - (paraphrase) use quantum devices to simulate quantum systems.