Cloud Quantum Computing of an Atomic Nucleus

We report a quantum simulation of the deuteron binding energy on quantum processors accessed via cloud servers. We use a Hamiltonian from pionless effective field theory at leading order. We design a low-depth version of the unitary coupled-cluster ansatz, use the variational quantum eigensolver algorithm, and compute the binding energy to within a few percent. Our work is the first step towards scalable nuclear structure computations on a quantum processor via the cloud, and it sheds light on how to map scientific computing applications onto nascent quantum devices.

# Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture # Computer Science # Nuclear physics research studies # Physics and Astronomy # Quantum many-body systems

Eugene Dumitrescu, Alex McCaskey, G. Hagen, et al. (2018). "Cloud Quantum Computing of an Atomic Nucleus". Physical Review Letters. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.120.210501