Seminar in Hadronic Physics

Simulating real-time dynamics of nuclear matter on a quantum computer

James Mulligan

University of California, Berkeley & LBNL

Currently there exists no viable “ldquo;ab initio”rdquo; approach to simulate the real-time dynamics of QCD in high-energy nuclear collisions. This profoundly limits our understanding of the formation, real-time evolution and hadronization of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Quantum computing may provide a solution to efficiently simulate these real-time dynamics in the future — a potential game-changing tool in how we study QCD. In this talk, I will discuss how to formulate QGP dynamics as open quantum systems that can be implemented on quantum computers. I will highlight early work on three applications of this approach: (i) Simulating the dynamics of hard probes in the QGP, (ii) Simulating non-equilibrium dynamics and thermalization, and (iii) Simulating the hadronization process. I will show simplified demonstrations of these methods on IBM’s quantum devices, and discuss the challenges and prospects for gaining new insights about QCD dynamics from quantum computers.