Quantum Simulating Neutrino Oscillations [Poster]

Shvetaank Tripathi, Sandeep Joshi, Garima Rajpoot +1 more

Changsuk Noh, B. M. Rodríguez-Lara, Dimitris G. Angelakis

Arindam Mallick

Giuseppe Di Molfetta, Armando Pérez

We analyze the simulation of Dirac neutrino oscillations using quantum walks, both in a vacuum and in matter. We show that this simulation, in the continuum limit, reproduces a set of coupled Dirac equations that describe neutrino flavor oscillations, and we make use of this to establish a connection with neutrino phenomenology, thus allowing one to fix the parameters of the simulation for a given neutrino experiment. We also analyze how matter effects for neutrino propagation can be simulated in the quantum walk. In this way, important features, such as the MSW effect, can be incorporated. Thus, the simulation of neutrino oscillations with the help of quantum walks might be useful to illustrate these effects in extreme conditions, such as the solar interior or supernovae.

Gayatri Singh, Kavita Dorai

Abstract Neutrino oscillations can be efficiently simulated on a quantum computer using the Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata (PMNS) theory in close analogy to the physical processes realized in experiments. We simulate three-flavor neutrino oscillations on a two-qubit NMR quantum information processor. The three-flavor neutrino states were encoded into the two-qubit system, leaving one redundant basis state (representing an unphysical sterile neutrino). The neutrino oscillations were experimentally simulated in different scenarios, including propagation in vacuum and through surrounding matter, and both with and without a CP violating phase δ at a Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) baseline distance of L = 1285 km. The oscillation probabilities were obtained after unitarily time evolving the initial flavor state and comparisons were performed between different scenarios. The interaction with matter is considered as a perturbation to the vacuum Hamiltonian, and the same quantum circuit is employed with an approximation of two mixing angles (θ 12 and θ 13) and mass eigenvalues. Our experimental results match well with numerical simulations and highlight the potential of quantum computers for exploring the physics of neutrino oscillations.

Alessandro Baroni