Toward nuclear physics from lattice QCD on quantum computers

TL;DR

This paper explores how quantum computers could revolutionize nuclear physics simulations by efficiently modeling atomic nuclei from fundamental principles, surpassing classical methods for large nuclei.

Contribution

It analyzes the computational complexities of classical and quantum lattice QCD simulations, highlighting the potential advantages of quantum computing for large-scale nuclear physics.

Findings

Quantum simulation scales better with nucleon number.

Quantum computing may outperform classical methods for large nuclei.

Discussion of the future potential of quantum simulations in nuclear physics.

Abstract

One of the ultimate missions of lattice QCD is to simulate atomic nuclei from the first principle of the strong interaction. This is an extremely hard task for the current computational technology, but might be reachable in coming quantum computing era. In this paper, we discuss the computational complexities of classical and quantum simulations of lattice QCD. It is shown that the quantum simulation scales better as a function of a nucleon number and thus will outperform for large nuclei.