Selected topics of quantum computing for nuclear physics

TL;DR

This review discusses how quantum computing can be applied to simulate nuclear physics, including gauge fields and nuclear structures, highlighting recent progress and future prospects.

Contribution

It summarizes recent efforts in formulating nuclear physics problems for quantum computers and reviews quantum algorithms for static and dynamic nuclear physics simulations.

Findings

Quantum gauge fields can be mapped onto quantum computers.

Quantum algorithms enable simulation of nuclear structures and scattering.

Quantum advantage demonstrated for certain nuclear physics problems.

Abstract

Nuclear physics, whose underling theory is described by quantum gauge field coupled with matter, is fundamentally important and yet is formidably challenge for simulation with classical computers. Quantum computing provides a perhaps transformative approach for studying and understanding nuclear physics. With rapid scaling-up of quantum processors as well as advances on quantum algorithms, the digital quantum simulation approach for simulating quantum gauge fields and nuclear physics has gained lots of attentions. In this review, we aim to summarize recent efforts on solving nuclear physics with quantum computers. We first discuss a formulation of nuclear physics in the language of quantum computing. In particular, we review how quantum gauge fields~(both Abelian and non-Abelian) and its coupling to matter field can be mapped and studied on a quantum computer. We then introduce related quantum algorithms for solving static properties and real-time evolution for quantum systems, and show their applications for a broad range of problems in nuclear physics, including simulation of lattice gauge field, solving nucleon and nuclear structure, quantum advantage for simulating scattering in quantum field theory, non-equilibrium dynamics, and so on. Finally, a short outlook on future work is given.