High Energy Physics

Simulation

One of the promising applications of quantum computers is simulating quantum field theory (QFT). We are focused on exploring the following directions:

• Simulating relativistic QFTs in the light-front formulation.

• Using sparsity-based methods for Hamiltonian simulation.

• Porting the techniques developed for quantum chemistry to general QFTs.

We explore the full spectrum of applications, from variational simulations of effective theories to be implemented on noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices, to ab initio simulations in the fault-tolerant régime.

Benchmarking

Exactly-solvable models are rich veins of insight; we aim to use the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick (LMG) model as a benchmarking tool for VQE. The LMG Hamiltonian is exactly diagonalizable with the Bethe ansatz, which gives us a general structure to use for a state-preparation circuit. The fact that it is exactly solvable also lets us solve for the parameters exactly with a classical machine. It is possible that we may augment this work to study other nuclear models. For example, we may simulate target nuclei in dark matter or neutrino detectors.