Preparation of excited states for nuclear dynamics on a quantum computer

Abstract

The authors explore methods for developing excited states for a nuclear system in a quantum computer and apply them to the thermal neutron-proton capture reaction, $n+p\ensuremath{\rightarrow}d+\ensuremath{\gamma}$. The applications of this work are a step toward computing nuclear reactions on quantum devices and hold promise for low-energy nuclear theory problems that are hard to solve on classical computers.