Large scale multi-node simulations of $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge theory quantum circuits using Google Cloud Platform

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates large-scale multi-node quantum circuit simulations of $ ext{Z}_2$ gauge theories on Google Cloud, revealing classical simulation limitations for certain quantum field theory observables.

Contribution

It introduces a multi-node, GPU-accelerated simulation framework on cloud infrastructure for $ ext{Z}_2$ gauge theories, highlighting current classical simulation constraints.

Findings

Simulated systems up to 36 qubits on cloud infrastructure.

Identified limitations in classical simulation accuracy for certain observables.

Showcased potential of TPUs for speeding up quantum circuit simulations.

Abstract

Simulating quantum field theories on a quantum computer is one of the most exciting fundamental physics applications of quantum information science. Dynamical time evolution of quantum fields is a challenge that is beyond the capabilities of classical computing, but it can teach us important lessons about the fundamental fabric of space and time. Whether we may answer scientific questions of interest using near-term quantum computing hardware is an open question that requires a detailed simulation study of quantum noise. Here we present a large scale simulation study powered by a multi-node implementation of qsim using the Google Cloud Platform. We additionally employ newly-developed GPU capabilities in qsim and show how Tensor Processing Units -- Application-specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) specialized for Machine Learning -- may be used to dramatically speed up the simulation of large quantum circuits. We demonstrate the use of high performance cloud computing for simulating $\mathbb{Z}_2$ quantum field theories on system sizes up to 36 qubits. We find this lattice size is not able to simulate our problem and observable combination with sufficient accuracy, implying more challenging observables of interest for this theory are likely beyond the reach of classical computation using exact circuit simulation.