Benchmarking Non-Abelian Lattice Gauge Theories with NISQ Algorithms

Non-Abelian gauge theories are at the heart of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, and can be treated numerically with a lattice regularization scheme. Computing the real-time dynamics of lattice gauge theories remains computationally intractable, as the only known classical algorithms are NP-complex. The discovery of polynomial quantum simulation algorithms [Lloyd, 1995], represents a promising alternative, provided scalable quantum computing platforms can be engineered. (1+1)-dimensional SU(2) fermionic gauge theory (SU2FGT) can be efficiently mapped to a quantum platform with limited qubit-connectivity, and represents the perfect testbed for benchmarking classically intractable computations on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) hardware. In this work, the real-time dynamics of (1+1)-SU2FGT is simulated on IBM's 5-qubit quantum platform family. To amplify the range of accessible real-time dynamics, a set of newly-developed hybrid quantum algorithms are applied to subsidize coherence-limited quantum hardware with classical resources.

The US Department of Energy's Office of Science Early Career Award DE-SC0020271, and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) Quantum Computing Application Teams program, under fieldwork proposal number ERKJ347.