Team simulates collider physics on quantum computer

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory physicists Christian Bauer, Marat Freytsis and Benjamin Nachman have leveraged an IBM Q quantum computer through the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Quantum Computing User Program to capture part of a calculation of two protons colliding. The calculation can show the probability that an outgoing particle will emit additional particles.

In the team’s recent paper, published in Physical Review Letters, the researchers describe how they used a method called effective field theory to break down their full theory into components. Ultimately, they developed a quantum algorithm to allow the computation of some of these components on a quantum computer while leaving other computations for classical computers.