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arXiv:2605.01099 · Physical review. D/Physical review. D.

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

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

hep-phastro-ph.HEastro-ph.SRnucl-thquant-phSubmitted May 1, 2026• Announced May 5, 2026• 0 citations• Revised Aug 5, 2026 (v2)
v1 · May 1, 2026v2 · Aug 5, 2026
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

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.

Journal reference
Phys. Rev. D 114, 043055 (2026)
DOI
10.1103/8kcg-l79c
Comments
13 pages, 6 figures; accepted to Phys. Rev. D

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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We simulate the time evolution of collective neutrino oscillations in two-flavor settings on a quantum computer. We explore the generalization of Trotter-Suzuki approximation to time-dependent Hamiltonian dynamics. The trotterization steps are further optimized using the Cartan decomposition of two-qubit unitary gates $U\ensuremath{\in}SU(4)$ in the minimum number of controlled-NOT (CNOT) gates making the algorithm more resilient to the hardware noise. A more efficient hybrid quantum-classical algorithm is also explored to solve the problem on noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices.
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 {\tt 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 {\tt 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.