Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2407.13914 · Physical review. D/Physical review. D.

Qutrit and qubit circuits for three-flavor collective neutrino oscillations

Francesco Turro, Ivan A. Chernyshev, Ramya Bhaskar, Marc Illa

Published Feb 18, 2025• 16 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We explore the utility of qutrits and qubits for simulating the flavor dynamics of dense neutrino systems. The evolution of such systems impacts some important astrophysical processes, such as core-collapse supernovae and the nucleosynthesis of heavy nuclei. Many-body simulations require classical resources beyond current computing capabilities for physically relevant system sizes. Quantum computers are therefore a promising candidate to efficiently simulate the many-body dynamics of collective neutrino oscillations. Previous quantum simulation efforts have primarily focused on properties of the two-flavor approximation due to their direct mapping to qubits. Here, we present new quantum circuits for simulating three-flavor neutrino systems on qutrit- and qubit-based platforms, and demonstrate their feasibility by simulating systems of two, four, and eight neutrinos on IBM and Quantinuum quantum computers.

DOI
10.1103/physrevd.111.043038

Related papers

Collective neutrino oscillations in three flavors on qubit and qutrit processors

Luca Spagnoli, Noah Goss, Alessandro Roggero +9 more

Collective neutrino flavor oscillations are of primary importance in understanding the dynamic evolution of core-collapse supernovae and subsequent terrestrial detection, but also among the most challenging aspects of numerical simulations. This situation is complicated by the quantum many-body nature of the problem due to neutrino-neutrino interactions which demands a quantum treatment. An additional complication is the presence of three flavors, which often is approximated by the electron flavor and a heavy lepton flavor. In this work, we provide both qubit and qutrit encodings for all three flavors, and develop optimized quantum circuits for the time evolution and analyze the Trotter error. We conclude our study with a hardware experiment of a system of two neutrinos with superconducting hardware: the IBM Torino device for qubits and AQT device for qutrits. We find that error mitigation greatly helps in obtaining a signal consistent with simulations. While hardware results are comparable at this stage, we expect the qutrit setup to be more convenient for large-scale simulations since it does not suffer from probability leakage into nonphsycial qubit space, unlike the qubit setup.

arXiv:2503.00607•Physical review. D/Physical review. D.•May 14, 2025•8 citations

Trapped-ion quantum simulation of collective neutrino oscillations

Valentina Amitrano, Alessandro Roggero, Piero Luchi +3 more

It is well known that the neutrino flavor in extreme astrophysical environments changes under the effect of three contributions: the vacuum oscillation, the interaction with the surrounding matter, and the collective oscillations due to interactions between different neutrinos. The latter adds a nonlinear contribution to the equations of motion, making the description of their dynamics complex. In this work we study various strategies to simulate the coherent collective oscillations of a system of $N$ neutrinos in the two-flavor approximation using quantum computation. This was achieved by using a pair-neutrino decomposition designed to account for the fact that the flavor Hamiltonian, in the presence of the neutrino-neutrino term, presents an all-to-all interaction that makes the implementation of the evolution dependent on the qubit topology. We analyze the Trotter error caused by the decomposition demonstrating that the complexity of the implementation of time evolution scales polynomially with the number of neutrinos and that the noise from near-term quantum device simulation can be reduced by optimizing the quantum circuit decomposition and exploiting a full-qubit connectivity. We find that the gate complexity using second order Trotter-Suzuki formulas scales better with system size than with other decomposition methods such as quantum signal processing. We finally present the application and the results of our algorithm on a real quantum device based on trapped-ion qubits.

arXiv:2207.03189•Physical review. D/Physical review. D.•Jan 13, 2023•41 citations

Three-flavor supernova neutrino simulation using a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm with qutrits

Daniel J. Heimsoth, A. Baha Balantekin, Pooja Siwach

We simulate a self-interacting three-flavor neutrino system within a core-collapse supernova using a hybrid classical-quantum algorithm on a qutrit computer. Based on the Dirac-Frenkel evolution equations, we employ a variation of the quantum-assisted simulator to calculate the system's time evolution operator by performing qutrit Hadamard tests to find expectation values of unitary operators in the Hamiltonian. The time evolution simulation is then done classically. We find that the hybrid algorithm produces results comparable to an exact numerical integration out to times of $t \approx 30 \,ω_0^{-1}$ with time step $δt = 0.005 \,ω_0^{-1}$, where $ω_0$ is the energy scale of the single neutrino vacuum oscillations. We discuss the lessons learned in simulating neutrino systems using this hybrid quantum-classical algorithm, along with the advantages it offers over quantum Trotterization.

hep-phCross-listedarXiv:2605.01099•Physical review. D/Physical review. D.•May 5, 2026•0 citations

Simulation of collective neutrino oscillations on a quantum computer

Benjamin Hall, Alessandro Roggero, Alessandro Baroni +1 more

In astrophysical scenarios with large neutrino density, like supernovae and the early universe, the presence of neutrino-neutrino interactions can give rise to collective flavor oscillations in the out-of-equilibrium collective dynamics of a neutrino cloud. The role of quantum correlations in these phenomena is not yet well understood, in large part due to complications in solving for the real-time evolution of the strongly coupled many-body system. Future fault-tolerant quantum computers hold the promise to overcome much of these limitations and provide direct access to the correlated neutrino dynamic. In this work, we present the first simulation of a small system of interacting neutrinos using current generation quantum devices. We introduce a strategy to overcome limitations in the natural connectivity of the qubits and use it to track the evolution of entanglement in real-time. The results show the critical importance of error-mitigation techniques to extract meaningful results for entanglement measures using noisy, near term, quantum devices.

arXiv:2102.12556•Physical review. D/Physical review. D.•Sep 3, 2021•71 citations

SIMULATING COLLECTIVE NEUTRINO OSCILLATIONS ON A QUANTUM COMPUTER

da Costa, David

Neutrinos are fascinating, elusive particles that play crucial roles in astrophysical environments such as dense stars, and the early universe, where they dominate energy transport and entropy. As neutral fermions in the Standard Model, neutrinos interact only weakly and exist in three flavors: electron, muon, and tau neutrinos. The discovery of neutrino flavor oscillation—a quantum phenomenon- reveals that neutrinos possess tiny mass, likely less than 0.2 eV. In dense environments, collective neutrino oscillations involving self-interactions emerge, complicating the numerics. However, these oscillations can be naturally simulated using quantum computers, by taking only two flavors as an isospin doublet leading to a spin model. In this review, we discuss the hybrid quantum-classical Lanczos (QLanczos) algorithm, which is used to find the eigenvalues of the collective neutrino Hamiltonian. This method uses the quantum imaginary-time evolution (QITE) to simulate the non-unitary imaginary-time evolution (ITE) of a quantum system using only unitary operations. Unlike variational algorithms that rely on a fixed ansatz, ITE always converges to the ground state. We also explore, as an altenative ITE, the probability ITE (PITE), in which an ancillary qubit is added to apply the ITE operator within an extended unitary. Once the ancilla is measured, the acted state collapses to the desired state. we also address the case with no mid-circuit measurements by employing quantum signal processing techniques.

•Mar 21, 2025•0 citations

Three-flavor collective neutrino oscillation simulations on a qubit quantum annealer

Ivan A. Chernyshev

In extreme environments such as core-collapse supernovae, neutron-star mergers, and the early Universe, neutrinos are dense enough that their self-interactions significantly affect, if not dominate, their flavor dynamics. In order to develop techniques for characterizing the resulting quantum entanglement, I present the results of simulations of Dirac neutrino-neutrino interactions that include all three physical neutrino flavors and were performed on D-Wave Inc.'s Advantage $5000+$ qubit quantum annealer. These results are checked against those from exact classical simulations, which are also used to compare the Dirac neutrino-neutrino interactions to neutrino-antineutrino and Majorana neutrino-neutrino interactions. The D-Wave Advantage annealer is shown to be able to reproduce time evolution with the precision of a classical machine for small numbers of neutrinos and to do so without Trotter errors. However, it suffers from poor scaling in qubit-count with the number of neutrinos.

Physical review. D/Physical review. D.•Feb 7, 2025•5 citations
We explore the utility of qutrits and qubits for simulating the flavor dynamics of dense neutrino systems. The evolution of such systems impacts some important astrophysical processes, such as core-collapse supernovae and the nucleosynthesis of heavy nuclei. Many-body simulations require classical resources beyond current computing capabilities for physically relevant system sizes. Quantum computers are therefore a promising candidate to efficiently simulate the many-body dynamics of collective neutrino oscillations. Previous quantum simulation efforts have primarily focused on properties of the two-flavor approximation due to their direct mapping to qubits. Here, we present new quantum circuits for simulating three-flavor neutrino systems on qutrit- and qubit-based platforms, and demonstrate their feasibility by simulating systems of two, four, and eight neutrinos on IBM and Quantinuum quantum computers.
Collective neutrino flavor oscillations are of primary importance in understanding the dynamic evolution of core-collapse supernovae and subsequent terrestrial detection, but also among the most challenging aspects of numerical simulations. This situation is complicated by the quantum many-body nature of the problem due to neutrino-neutrino interactions which demands a quantum treatment. An additional complication is the presence of three flavors, which often is approximated by the electron flavor and a heavy lepton flavor. In this work, we provide both qubit and qutrit encodings for all three flavors, and develop optimized quantum circuits for the time evolution and analyze the Trotter error. We conclude our study with a hardware experiment of a system of two neutrinos with superconducting hardware: the IBM Torino device for qubits and AQT device for qutrits. We find that error mitigation greatly helps in obtaining a signal consistent with simulations. While hardware results are comparable at this stage, we expect the qutrit setup to be more convenient for large-scale simulations since it does not suffer from probability leakage into nonphsycial qubit space, unlike the qubit setup.
It is well known that the neutrino flavor in extreme astrophysical environments changes under the effect of three contributions: the vacuum oscillation, the interaction with the surrounding matter, and the collective oscillations due to interactions between different neutrinos. The latter adds a nonlinear contribution to the equations of motion, making the description of their dynamics complex. In this work we study various strategies to simulate the coherent collective oscillations of a system of NNN neutrinos in the two-flavor approximation using quantum computation. This was achieved by using a pair-neutrino decomposition designed to account for the fact that the flavor Hamiltonian, in the presence of the neutrino-neutrino term, presents an all-to-all interaction that makes the implementation of the evolution dependent on the qubit topology. We analyze the Trotter error caused by the decomposition demonstrating that the complexity of the implementation of time evolution scales polynomially with the number of neutrinos and that the noise from near-term quantum device simulation can be reduced by optimizing the quantum circuit decomposition and exploiting a full-qubit connectivity. We find that the gate complexity using second order Trotter-Suzuki formulas scales better with system size than with other decomposition methods such as quantum signal processing. We finally present the application and the results of our algorithm on a real quantum device based on trapped-ion qubits.
We simulate a self-interacting three-flavor neutrino system within a core-collapse supernova using a hybrid classical-quantum algorithm on a qutrit computer. Based on the Dirac-Frenkel evolution equations, we employ a variation of the quantum-assisted simulator to calculate the system's time evolution operator by performing qutrit Hadamard tests to find expectation values of unitary operators in the Hamiltonian. The time evolution simulation is then done classically. We find that the hybrid algorithm produces results comparable to an exact numerical integration out to times of t≈30 ω0−1t \approx 30 \,ω_0^{-1}t≈30ω0−1​ with time step δt=0.005 ω0−1δt = 0.005 \,ω_0^{-1}δt=0.005ω0−1​, where ω0ω_0ω0​ is the energy scale of the single neutrino vacuum oscillations. We discuss the lessons learned in simulating neutrino systems using this hybrid quantum-classical algorithm, along with the advantages it offers over quantum Trotterization.
In astrophysical scenarios with large neutrino density, like supernovae and the early universe, the presence of neutrino-neutrino interactions can give rise to collective flavor oscillations in the out-of-equilibrium collective dynamics of a neutrino cloud. The role of quantum correlations in these phenomena is not yet well understood, in large part due to complications in solving for the real-time evolution of the strongly coupled many-body system. Future fault-tolerant quantum computers hold the promise to overcome much of these limitations and provide direct access to the correlated neutrino dynamic. In this work, we present the first simulation of a small system of interacting neutrinos using current generation quantum devices. We introduce a strategy to overcome limitations in the natural connectivity of the qubits and use it to track the evolution of entanglement in real-time. The results show the critical importance of error-mitigation techniques to extract meaningful results for entanglement measures using noisy, near term, quantum devices.
Neutrinos are fascinating, elusive particles that play crucial roles in astrophysical environments such as dense stars, and the early universe, where they dominate energy transport and entropy. As neutral fermions in the Standard Model, neutrinos interact only weakly and exist in three flavors: electron, muon, and tau neutrinos. The discovery of neutrino flavor oscillation—a quantum phenomenon- reveals that neutrinos possess tiny mass, likely less than 0.2 eV. In dense environments, collective neutrino oscillations involving self-interactions emerge, complicating the numerics. However, these oscillations can be naturally simulated using quantum computers, by taking only two flavors as an isospin doublet leading to a spin model. In this review, we discuss the hybrid quantum-classical Lanczos (QLanczos) algorithm, which is used to find the eigenvalues of the collective neutrino Hamiltonian. This method uses the quantum imaginary-time evolution (QITE) to simulate the non-unitary imaginary-time evolution (ITE) of a quantum system using only unitary operations. Unlike variational algorithms that rely on a fixed ansatz, ITE always converges to the ground state. We also explore, as an altenative ITE, the probability ITE (PITE), in which an ancillary qubit is added to apply the ITE operator within an extended unitary. Once the ancilla is measured, the acted state collapses to the desired state. we also address the case with no mid-circuit measurements by employing quantum signal processing techniques.
In extreme environments such as core-collapse supernovae, neutron-star mergers, and the early Universe, neutrinos are dense enough that their self-interactions significantly affect, if not dominate, their flavor dynamics. In order to develop techniques for characterizing the resulting quantum entanglement, I present the results of simulations of Dirac neutrino-neutrino interactions that include all three physical neutrino flavors and were performed on D-Wave Inc.'s Advantage 5000+5000+5000+ qubit quantum annealer. These results are checked against those from exact classical simulations, which are also used to compare the Dirac neutrino-neutrino interactions to neutrino-antineutrino and Majorana neutrino-neutrino interactions. The D-Wave Advantage annealer is shown to be able to reproduce time evolution with the precision of a classical machine for small numbers of neutrinos and to do so without Trotter errors. However, it suffers from poor scaling in qubit-count with the number of neutrinos.