Towards Cosmological Simulations of Dark Matter on Quantum Computers

TL;DR

This paper explores how quantum computers could revolutionize cosmological dark matter simulations by overcoming classical computational limitations, using a hybrid quantum-classical approach to solve nonlinear equations.

Contribution

It proposes a novel hybrid quantum-classical variational algorithm to address nonlinearities in cosmological simulations, specifically the Schrödinger-Poisson equations.

Findings

Proof-of-concept mock quantum simulation demonstrated feasibility.

Hybrid algorithm can potentially handle nonlinear gravitational equations.

Future quantum computers may enable large-scale, accurate dark matter simulations.

Abstract

State-of-the-art cosmological simulations on classical computers are limited by time, energy, and memory usage. Quantum computers can perform some calculations exponentially faster than classical computers, using exponentially less energy and memory, and may enable extremely large simulations that accurately capture the whole dynamic range of structure in the Universe within statistically representative cosmic volumes. However, not all computational tasks exhibit a `quantum advantage'. Quantum circuits act linearly on quantum states, so nonlinearities (e.g. self-gravity in cosmological simulations) pose a significant challenge. Here we outline one potential approach to overcome this challenge and solve the (nonlinear) Schrodinger-Poisson equations for the evolution of self-gravitating dark matter, based on a hybrid quantum-classical variational algorithm framework (Lubasch 2020). We demonstrate the method with a proof-of-concept mock quantum simulation, envisioning a future where quantum computers will one day lead simulations of dark matter.