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arXiv:2010.00046 · Physical review. D/Physical review. D.

Towards a quantum computing algorithm for helicity amplitudes and parton showers

Khadeejah Bepari, Sarah Alam Malik, Michael Spannowsky, Simon Williams

Published Apr 26, 2021• 38 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The interpretation of measurements of high-energy particle collisions relies heavily on the performance of full event generators, which include the calculation of the hard process and the subsequent parton shower step. With the continuous improvement of quantum devices, dedicated algorithms are needed to exploit the potential quantum that computers can provide. We propose general and extendable algorithms for quantum gate computers to facilitate calculations of helicity amplitudes and the parton shower process. The helicity amplitude calculation exploits the equivalence between spinors and qubits and the unique features of a quantum computer to compute the helicities of each particle involved simultaneously, thus fully utilizing the quantum nature of the computation. This advantage over classical computers is further exploited by the simultaneous computation of s- and t-channel amplitudes for a $2\ensuremath{\rightarrow}2$ process. The parton shower algorithm simulates collinear emission for a two-step, discrete parton shower. In contrast to classical implementations, the quantum algorithm constructs a wave function with a superposition of all shower histories for the whole parton shower process, thus removing the need to explicitly keep track of individual shower histories. Both algorithms utilize the quantum computers ability to remain in a quantum state throughout the computation and represent a first step towards a quantum computing algorithm describing the full collision event at the LHC.

DOI
10.1103/physrevd.103.076020

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This paper presents a novel quantum walk approach to simulating parton showers on a quantum computer. We demonstrate that the quantum walk paradigm offers a natural and more efficient approach to simulating parton showers on quantum devices, with the emission probabilities implemented as the coin flip for the walker, and the particle emissions to either gluons or quark pairs corresponding to the movement of the walker in two dimensions. A quantum algorithm is proposed for a simplified, toy model of a 31-step, collinear parton shower, hence significantly increasing the number of steps of the parton shower that can be simulated compared to previous quantum algorithms. Furthermore, it scales efficiently: the number of possible shower steps increases exponentially with the number of qubits, and the circuit depth grows linearly with the number of steps. Reframing the parton shower in the context of a quantum walk therefore brings dramatic improvements, and is a step towards extending the current quantum algorithms to simulate more realistic parton showers.
Simulating quantum field theories is a flagship application of quantum computing. However, calculating experimentally relevant high energy scattering amplitudes entirely on a quantum computer is prohibitively difficult. It is well known that such high energy scattering processes can be factored into pieces that can be computed using well established perturbative techniques, and pieces which currently have to be simulated using classical Markov chain algorithms. These classical Markov chain simulation approaches work well to capture many of the salient features, but cannot capture all quantum effects. To exploit quantum resources in the most efficient way, we introduce a new paradigm for quantum algorithms in field theories. This approach uses quantum computers only for those parts of the problem which are not computable using existing techniques. In particular, we develop a polynomial time quantum final state shower that accurately models the effects of intermediate spin states similar to those present in high energy electroweak showers with a global evolution variable. The algorithm is explicitly demonstrated for a simplified quantum field theory on a quantum computer.
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Quantum computing has emerged as a promising framework for addressing computationally demanding problems in collider physics. In recent years, a growing number of quantum algorithms have been proposed for applications ranging from event generation and parton shower simulation to the evaluation of scattering amplitudes, loop and phase-space integration, and optimization problems relevant to experimental analysis. We provide a concise overview of the main ideas behind these developments, with emphasis on the potential advantages of quantum approaches in comparison with classical methods, as well as on the current limitations imposed by noisy intermediate-scale quantum hardware.
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