PIRSA:19040080

Video URL

https://pirsa.org/19040080

How to simulate problems from high energy physics on quantum computers

Muschik, C. (2019). How to simulate problems from high energy physics on quantum computers. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. https://pirsa.org/19040080

Muschik, Christine. How to simulate problems from high energy physics on quantum computers. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Apr. 26, 2019, https://pirsa.org/19040080 

          @misc{ scivideos_PIRSA:19040080,
            doi = {10.48660/19040080},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/19040080},
            author = {Muschik, Christine},
            keywords = {Other Physics},
            language = {en},
            title = {How to simulate problems from high energy physics on quantum computers},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics},
            year = {2019},
            month = {apr},
            note = {PIRSA:19040080 see, \url{https://scivideos.org/pirsa/19040080}}
          }

Christine Muschik Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC)

Talk numberPIRSA:19040080
DOI10.48660/19040080
Source RepositoryPIRSA
Collection
Talk Type Scientific Series
Subject

Abstract

Gauge theories are fundamental to our understanding of interactions between the elementary constituents of matter as mediated by gauge bosons. However, computing the real-time dynamics in gauge theories is a notorious challenge for classical computational methods. In the spirit of Feynman's vision of a quantum simulator, this has recently stimulated theoretical effort to devise schemes for simulating such theories on engineered quantum-mechanical devices, with the difficulty that gauge invariance and the associated local conservation laws (Gauss laws) need to be implemented. Here we report the first digital quantum simulation of a lattice gauge theory, by realising 1+1-dimensional quantum electrodynamics (Schwinger model) on a few-qubit trapped-ion quantum computer. We are interested in the real-time evolution of the Schwinger mechanism, describing the instability of the bare vacuum due to quantum fluctuations, which manifests itself in the spontaneous creation of electron-positron pairs. Our work represents a first step towards quantum simulating high-energy theories with atomic physics experiments, the long-term vision being the extension to real-time quantum simulations of non-Abelian lattice gauge theories.