Quantum Simulation of Nuclear Inelastic Scattering

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quantum algorithm for simulating nuclear inelastic scattering, potentially enabling exponential speedups in modeling complex nuclear reactions using quantum computers.

Contribution

The paper develops a time-dependent quantum algorithm for nuclear inelastic scattering, demonstrating its application to Coulomb excitation of deuteron with IBM Qiskit.

Findings

Potential exponential speedup in simulating nuclear scattering dynamics

Successful demonstration on IBM Qiskit for Coulomb excitation

Algorithm targets a subset of physically relevant inelastic scattering problems

Abstract

We present a time-dependent quantum algorithm for nuclear inelastic scattering in the time-dependent basis function on qubits approach. This algorithm aims to quantum simulate a subset of the nuclear inelastic scattering problems that are of physical interest, in which the internal degrees of freedom of the reaction system are excited by time-dependent external interactions. We expect that our algorithm will enable an exponential speedup in simulating the dynamics of the subset of the inelastic scattering problems, which would also be advantageous for the applications to more complicated scattering problems. For a demonstration problem, we solve for the Coulomb excitation of the deuteron, where the quantum simulations are performed with IBM Qiskit.