Quantum Computing for High-Energy Physics: State of the Art and Challenges

TLDR

Quantum computing promises a paradigm shift with potential quantum advantage, and the rapidly advancing qubit technologies enable small‑scale applications that are especially relevant to high‑energy physics, which faces hard theoretical models and massive data challenges from experiments like the LHC upgrade. This roadmap, led by CERN, DESY, and IBM, surveys the current state of high‑energy physics quantum computing, presents benchmark applications, and aims to spur further research and demonstrations on near‑term quantum devices. The authors estimate resources for 100‑qubit, error‑mitigated quantum computers capable of executing several thousand two‑qubit gates to run the benchmark applications. Published by the American Physical Society in 2024.

Abstract

Quantum computers offer an intriguing path for a paradigmatic change of computing in the natural sciences and beyond, with the potential for achieving a so-called quantum advantage—namely, a significant (in some cases exponential) speedup of numerical simulations. The rapid development of hardware devices with various realizations of qubits enables the execution of small-scale but representative applications on quantum computers. In particular, the high-energy physics community plays a pivotal role in accessing the power of quantum computing, since the field is a driving source for challenging computational problems. This concerns, on the theoretical side, the exploration of models that are very hard or even impossible to address with classical techniques and, on the experimental side, the enormous data challenge of newly emerging experiments, such as the upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider. In this Roadmap paper, led by CERN, DESY, and IBM, we provide the status of high-energy physics quantum computations and give examples of theoretical and experimental target benchmark applications, which can be addressed in the near future. Having in mind hardware with about 100 qubits capable of executing several thousand two-qubit gates, where possible, we also provide resource estimates for the examples given using error-mitigated quantum computing. The ultimate declared goal of this task force is therefore to trigger further research in the high-energy physics community to develop interesting use cases for demonstrations on near-term quantum computers. Published by the American Physical Society 2024