Simulating collider physics on quantum computers using effective field theories

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quantum computing approach to simulate low-energy effective field theories in particle physics, efficiently separating high-energy perturbative calculations from low-energy dynamics.

Contribution

It demonstrates how quantum algorithms can simulate low-energy EFT dynamics from first principles, reducing computational complexity compared to full quantum field theory simulations.

Findings

Successful simulation of vacuum transition amplitudes using quantum computers

Validation of quantum algorithms with IBMQ hardware

Effective field theories enable efficient low-energy quantum simulations

Abstract

Simulating the full dynamics of a quantum field theory over a wide range of energies requires exceptionally large quantum computing resources. Yet for many observables in particle physics, perturbative techniques are sufficient to accurately model all but a constrained range of energies within the validity of the theory. We demonstrate that effective field theories (EFTs) provide an efficient mechanism to separate the high energy dynamics that is easily calculated by traditional perturbation theory from the dynamics at low energy and show how quantum algorithms can be used to simulate the dynamics of the low energy EFT from first principles. As an explicit example we calculate the expectation values of vacuum-to-vacuum and vacuum-to-one-particle transitions in the presence of a time-ordered product of two Wilson lines in scalar field theory, an object closely related to those arising in EFTs of the Standard Model of particle physics. Calculations are performed using simulations of a quantum computer as well as measurements using the IBMQ Manhattan machine.