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The Phase-Space approach (PSA), which was originally introduced in [Lacroix et al., Phys. Rev. D 106, 123006 (2022)] to describe neutrino flavor oscillations for interacting neutrinos emitted from stellar objects is extended to describe arbitrary numbers of neutrino beams. The PSA is based on mapping the quantum fluctuations into a statistical treatment by sampling initial conditions followed by independent mean-field evolution. A new method is proposed to perform this sampling that allows treating an arbitrary number of neutrinos in each neutrino beam. We validate the technique successfully and confirm its predictive power on several examples where a reference exact calculation is possible. We show that it can describe many-body effects, such as entanglement and dissipation induced by the interaction between neutrinos. Due to the complexity of the problem, exact solutions can only be calculated for rather limited cases, with a limited number of beams and/or neutrinos in each beam. The PSA approach considerably reduces the numerical cost and provides an efficient technique to accurately simulate arbitrary numbers of beams. Examples of PSA results are given here, including up to 200 beams with time-independent or time-dependent Hamiltonian. We anticipate that this approach will be useful to bridge exact microscopic techniques with more traditional transport theories used in neutrino oscillations. It will also provide important reference calculations for future quantum computer applications where other techniques are not applicable to classical computers.

The auxiliary field diffusion Monte Carlo method uses imaginary-time projection techniques to accurately solve the ground-state wave function of atomic nuclei and infinite nuclear matter. In this work, we present a novel representation of the imaginary-time propagator based on restricted Boltzmann machines. We test its accuracy against the routinely employed Hubbard-Stratonovich transformations by evaluating ground-state energies and single-particle densities of selected light nuclei. This analysis paves the way for incorporating more realistic nuclear potentials in the auxiliary field diffusion Monte Carlo method, including isospin-dependent spin-orbit terms and cubic spin-isospin operators, which characterize accurate phenomenological and chiral effective field theory Hamiltonians., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures

Simulations of scattering processes are essential in understanding the physics of our universe. Computing relevant scattering quantities from ab initio methods is extremely difficult on classical devices because of the substantial computational resources needed. This work reports the development of an algorithm that makes it possible to obtain phase shifts for generic non-relativistic elastic scattering processes on a quantum computer. This algorithm is based on extracting phase shifts from the direct implementation of the real-time evolution. The algorithm is improved by a variational procedure, making it more accurate and resistant to the quantum noise. The reliability of the algorithm is first demonstrated by means of classical numerical simulations for different potentials, and later tested on existing quantum hardware, specifically on IBM quantum processors., Comment: 17 pages, 15 figures, 4 tables

We consider a class of Heisenberg all-to-all coupled spin models inspired by neutrino interactions in a supernova with $N$ degrees of freedom. These models are characterized by a coupling matrix that is relatively simple in the sense that there are only a few, relative to $N$, non-trivial eigenvalues, in distinction to the classic Heisenberg spin-glass models, leading to distinct behavior in both the high-temperature and low-temperature regimes. When the momenta of the neutrinos are uniform and random in directions, we can calculate the large-$N$ partition function for the quantum Heisenberg model. In particular, the high-temperature partition function predicts a non-Gaussian density of states, providing interesting counter-examples showing the limits of general theorems on the density of states for quantum spin models. We can repeat the same argument for classical Heisenberg models, also known as rotor models, and we find the high-temperature expansion is completely controlled by the eigenvalues of the coupling matrix, and again predicts non-Gaussian behavior for the density of states as long as the number of eigenvalues does not scale linearly with $N$. Indeed, we derive the amusing fact that these \emph{thermodynamic} partition functions are essentially the generating function for counting permutations in the high-temperature regime. Finally, for the case relevant to neutrinos in a supernova, we identify the low-temperature phase as a unique state with the direction of the momenta of the neutrino dictating its coherent state in flavor-space, a state we dub the "flavor-momentum-locked" state., Comment: 26 pg., 3 app, multiple figs

The homogeneous Bethe-Salpeter equation (hBSE), describing a bound system in a genuinely relativistic quantum-field theory framework, was solved for the first time by using a D-Wave quantum annealer. After applying standard techniques of discretization, the hBSE, in ladder approximation, can be formally transformed in a generalized eigenvalue problem (GEVP), with two square matrices: one symmetric and the other non symmetric. The latter matrix poses the challenge of obtaining a suitable formal approach for investigating the non symmetric GEVP by means of a quantum annealer, i.e to recast it as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problem. A broad numerical analysis of the proposed algorithms, applied to matrices of dimension up to 64, was carried out by using both the proprietary simulated-anneaing package and the D-Wave Advantage 4.1 system. The numerical results very nicely compare with those obtained with standard classical algorithms, and also show interesting scalability features., Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures

We explore the practicality of early fault-tolerant quantum algorithms, focusing on ground-state energy estimation problems. Specifically, we address the computation of the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the spectral measure of the Hamiltonian and the identification of its discontinuities. Scaling to bigger system sizes unveils three challenges: the smoothness of the CDF for large supports, the absence of tight lower bounds on the overlap with the actual ground state, and the complexity of preparing high-quality initial states. To tackle these challenges, we introduce a signal processing technique for identifying the inflection point of the CDF. We argue that this change of paradigm significantly simplifies the problem, making it more accessible while still being accurate. Hence, instead of trying to find the exact ground-state energy, we advocate improving on the classical estimate by aiming at the low-energy support of the initial state. Furthermore, we offer quantitative resource estimates for the maximum number of samples required to identify an increase in the CDF of a given size. Finally, we conduct numerical experiments on a 26-qubit fully-connected Heisenberg model using a truncated density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) initial state of low bond dimension. Results show that the prediction obtained with the quantum algorithm aligns well with the DMRG-converged energy at large bond dimensions and requires several orders of magnitude fewer samples than predicted by the theory. Hence, we argue that CDF-based quantum algorithms are a viable, practical alternative to quantum phase estimation in resource-limited scenarios., Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures

Hamiltonian moments in Fourier space - expectation values of the unitary evolution operator under a Hamiltonian at different times - provide a convenient framework to understand quantum systems. They offer insights into the energy distribution, higher-order dynamics, response functions, correlation information and physical properties. This paper focuses on the computation of Fourier moments within the context of a nuclear effective field theory on superconducting quantum hardware. The study integrates echo verification and noise renormalization into Hadamard tests using control reversal gates. These techniques, combined with purification and error suppression methods, effectively address quantum hardware decoherence. The analysis, conducted using noise models, reveals a significant reduction in noise strength by two orders of magnitude. Moreover, quantum circuits involving up to 266 CNOT gates over five qubits demonstrate high accuracy under these methodologies when run on IBM superconducting quantum devices., Comment: 12 pages, 7 pages appendix, comments are welcome

Time scales associated with many-body fast neutrino flavor conversions in core-collapse supernova are explored in the context of an effective two-flavor model with axial symmetry. We present a preliminary study of time scales obtained from a linear stability analysis and from the distributions of Loschmidt echo crossing times (intimately connected to dynamical phase transitions in non-equilibrium systems) determined by time evolution with the exact many-body Hamiltonian. Starting from a tensor-product initial state describing systems of $N$ neutrinos, with $N/2$ electron-type and $N/2$ heavy-type, with uniform angular distributions, the Loschmidt echo crossing times, $t_{\mathcal{L}_{\times}}$, are found to exhibit two distinct time scales that are exponentially separated. The second peak structure at longer times, effectively absent for $N=4$, develops with increasing $N$. When re-scaled in terms of $\log t_{\mathcal{L}_{\times}}$, the distributions are found to become increasingly well described by the sum of two stable distributions. The distribution of Loschmidt echo crossing times differs somewhat from the results of the (numerical) linear stability analysis, which exhibits a peak at finite frequency and a second peak consistent with zero frequency. The exact analysis suggests that the zero-frequency instability manifests itself as a modest flavor-conversion time scale., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures; Updated references, and acknowledgments section

Quantum computers offer an intriguing path for a paradigmatic change of computing in the natural sciences and beyond, with the potential for achieving a so-called quantum advantage, namely a significant (in some cases exponential) speed-up of numerical simulations. The rapid development of hardware devices with various realizations of qubits enables the execution of small scale but representative applications on quantum computers. In particular, the high-energy physics community plays a pivotal role in accessing the power of quantum computing, since the field is a driving source for challenging computational problems. This concerns, on the theoretical side, the exploration of models which are very hard or even impossible to address with classical techniques and, on the experimental side, the enormous data challenge of newly emerging experiments, such as the upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider. In this roadmap paper, led by CERN, DESY and IBM, we provide the status of high-energy physics quantum computations and give examples for theoretical and experimental target benchmark applications, which can be addressed in the near future. Having the IBM 100 x 100 challenge in mind, where possible, we also provide resource estimates for the examples given using error mitigated quantum computing.

Simulating many-body quantum systems is a promising task for quantum computers. However, the depth of most algorithms, such as product formulas, scales with the number of terms in the Hamiltonian, and can therefore be challenging to implement on near-term, as well as early fault-tolerant quantum devices. An efficient solution is given by the stochastic compilation protocol known as qDrift, which builds random product formulas by sampling from the Hamiltonian according to the coefficients. In this work, we unify the qDrift protocol with importance sampling, allowing us to sample from arbitrary probability distributions, while controlling both the bias, as well as the statistical fluctuations. We show that the simulation cost can be reduced while achieving the same accuracy, by considering the individual simulation cost during the sampling stage. Moreover, we incorporate recent work on composite channel and compute rigorous bounds on the bias and variance, showing how to choose the number of samples, experiments, and time steps for a given target accuracy. These results lead to a more efficient implementation of the qDrift protocol, both with and without the use of composite channels. Theoretical results are confirmed by numerical simulations performed on a lattice nuclear effective field theory., Comment: 17 pages, 9 pages supplemental material

In addition to the need for stable and precisely controllable qubits, quantum computers take advantage of good readout schemes. Superconducting qubit states can be inferred from the readout signal transmitted through a dispersively coupled resonator. This work proposes a novel readout classification method for superconducting qubits based on a neural network pre-trained with an autoencoder approach. A neural network is pre-trained with qubit readout signals as autoencoders in order to extract relevant features from the data set. Afterwards, the pre-trained network inner layer values are used to perform a classification of the inputs in a supervised manner. We demonstrate that this method can enhance classification performance, particularly for short and long time measurements where more traditional methods present lower performance., Comment: 16 pages, 23 figures

Accurate predictions of inclusive scattering cross sections in the linear response regime require efficient and controllable methods to calculate the spectral density in a strongly-correlated many-body system. In this work we reformulate the recently proposed Gaussian Integral Transform technique in terms of Fourier moments of the system Hamiltonian which can be computed efficiently on a quantum computer. One of the main advantages of this framework is that it allows for an important reduction of the computational cost by exploiting previous knowledge about the energy moments of the spectral density. For a simple model of medium mass nucleus like $^{40}$Ca and target energy resolution of $1$ MeV we find an expected speed-up of $\approx 125$ times for the calculation of the giant dipole response and of $\approx 50$ times for the simulation of quasi-elastic electron scattering at typical momentum transfers., Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures

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 non-linear 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 noisy 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 formulae 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-ions qubits., Comment: Updated version accepted for publication

It is for the first time that Quantum Simulation for High Energy Physics (HEP) is studied in the U.S. decadal particle-physics community planning, and in fact until recently, this was not considered a mainstream topic in the community. This fact speaks of a remarkable rate of growth of this subfield over the past few years, stimulated by the impressive advancements in Quantum Information Sciences (QIS) and associated technologies over the past decade, and the significant investment in this area by the government and private sectors in the U.S. and other countries. High-energy physicists have quickly identified problems of importance to our understanding of nature at the most fundamental level, from tiniest distances to cosmological extents, that are intractable with classical computers but may benefit from quantum advantage. They have initiated, and continue to carry out, a vigorous program in theory, algorithm, and hardware co-design for simulations of relevance to the HEP mission. This community whitepaper is an attempt to bring this exciting and yet challenging area of research to the spotlight, and to elaborate on what the promises, requirements, challenges, and potential solutions are over the next decade and beyond., Comment: This is a whitepaper prepared for the topical groups CompF6 (Quantum computing), TF05 (Lattice Gauge Theory), and TF10 (Quantum Information Science) within the Computational Frontier and Theory Frontier of the U.S. Community Study on the Future of Particle Physics (Snowmass 2021). 103 pages and 1 figure

Neutron matter, through its connection to neutron stars as well as systems like cold atom gases, is one of the most interesting yet computationally accessible systems in nuclear physics. The Configuration-Interaction Monte Carlo (CIMC) method is a stochastic many-body technique allowing to tackle strongly coupled systems. In contrast to other Quantum Monte Carlo methods employed in nuclear physics, the CIMC method can be formulated directly in momentum space allowing for an efficient use of non-local interactions. In this work we extend CIMC method to include three-nucleon interactions through the normal-ordered two-body approximation. We present results for the equation of state of neutron matter in line with other many-body calculations that employ low resolution chiral interactions, and provide predictions for the momentum distribution and the static structure factor., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures

Compared with time independent Hamiltonians, the dynamics of generic quantum Hamiltonians $H(t)$ are complicated by the presence of time ordering in the evolution operator. In the context of digital quantum simulation, this difficulty prevents a direct adaptation of time independent simulation algorithms for time dependent simulation. However, there exists a framework within the theory of dynamical systems which eliminates time ordering by adding a "clock" degree of freedom. In this work, we provide a computational framework, based on this reduction, for encoding time dependent dynamics as time independent systems. As a result, we make two advances in digital Hamiltonian simulation. First, we create a time dependent simulation algorithm based on performing qubitization on the augmented clock system, and in doing so, provide the first qubitization-based approach to time dependent Hamiltonians that goes beyond Trotterization of the ordered exponential. Second, we define a natural generalization of multiproduct formulas for time-ordered exponentials, then propose and analyze an algorithm based on these formulas. Unlike other algorithms of similar accuracy, the multiproduct approach achieves commutator scaling, meaning that this method outperforms existing methods for physically-local time dependent Hamiltonians. Our work reduces the disparity between time dependent and time independent simulation and indicates a step towards optimal quantum simulation of time dependent Hamiltonians., Comment: 58 pages, 5 figures

Collective neutrino oscillations play a crucial role in transporting lepton flavor in astrophysical settings like supernovae and neutron star binary merger remnants, which are characterized by large neutrino densities. In these settings, simulations in the mean-field approximation show that neutrino-neutrino interactions can overtake vacuum oscillations and give rise to fast collective flavor evolution on time-scales $t\propto\mu^{-1}$, with $\mu$ proportional to the local neutrino density. In this work, we study the full out-of-equilibrium flavor dynamics in simple multi-angle geometries displaying fast oscillations in the mean field linear stability analysis. Focusing on simple initial conditions, we analyze the production of pair correlations and entanglement in the complete many-body-dynamics as a function of the number $N$ of neutrinos in the system, for up to thousands of neutrinos. Similarly to simpler geometries with only two neutrino beams, we identify three regimes: stable configurations with vanishing flavor oscillations, marginally unstable configurations with evolution occurring on long time scales $\tau\approx\mu^{-1}\sqrt{N}$, and unstable configurations showing flavor evolution on short time scales $\tau\approx\mu^{-1}\log(N)$. We present evidence that these fast collective modes are generated by the same dynamical phase transition which leads to the slow bipolar oscillations, establishing a connection between these two phenomena and explaining the difference in their time scales. We conclude by discussing a semi-classical approximation which reproduces the entanglement entropy at short to medium time scales and can be potentially useful in situations with more complicated geometries where classical simulation methods starts to become inefficient.

Quantum simulations of Lattice Gauge Theories (LGTs) are often formulated on an enlarged Hilbert space containing both physical and unphysical sectors in order to retain a local Hamiltonian. We provide simple fault-tolerant procedures that exploit such redundancy by combining a phase flip error correction code with the Gauss' law constraint to correct one-qubit errors for a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ or truncated U(1) LGT in 1+1 and 2+1 dimensions with a link flux cutoff of $1$. Unlike existing work on detecting violations of Gauss' law, our circuits are fault tolerant and the overall error correction scheme outperforms a na\"{i}ve application of the $[5,1,3]$ code. The constructions outlined can be extended to LGT systems with larger cutoffs and may be of use in understanding how to hybridize error correction and quantum simulation for LGTs in higher space-time dimensions and with different symmetry groups.

We investigate the dynamics of heavy impurities embedded in an ultra-cold Fermi gas by using a Generalized Langevin equation. The latter -- derived by means of influence functional theory -- describes the stochastic classical dynamics of the impurities and the quantum nature of the fermionic bath manifests in the emergent interaction between the impurities and in the viscosity tensor. By focusing on the two-impurity case, we predict the existence of bound states, in different conditions of coupling and temperature, and whose life-time can be analytically estimated. Our predictions should be testable using cold-gases platforms within current technology., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

The calculation of dynamic response functions is expected to be an early application benefiting from rapidly developing quantum hardware resources. The ability to calculate real-time quantities of strongly-correlated quantum systems is one of the most exciting applications that can easily reach beyond the capabilities of traditional classical hardware. Response functions of fermionic systems at moderate momenta and energies corresponding roughly to the Fermi energy of the system are a potential early application because the relevant operators are nearly local and the energies can be resolved in moderately short real time, reducing the spatial resolution and gate depth required. This is particularly the case in quasielastic electron and neutrino scattering from nuclei, a topic of great interest in the nuclear and particle physics communities and directly related to experiments designed to probe neutrino properties. In this work we use current quantum hardware and error mitigation protocols to calculate response functions for a highly simplified nuclear model through calculations of a 2-point real time correlation function for a modified Fermi-Hubbard model in two dimensions with three distinguishable nucleons on four lattice sites., Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures

Accurate calculations of the spectral density in a strongly correlated quantum many-body system are of fundamental importance to study its dynamics in the linear response regime. Typical examples are the calculation of inclusive and semi-exclusive scattering cross sections in atomic nuclei and transport properties of nuclear and neutron star matter. Integral transform techniques play an important role in accessing the spectral density in a variety of nuclear systems. However, their accuracy is in practice limited by the need to perform a numerical inversion which is often ill-conditioned. In the present work we extend a recently proposed quantum algorithm which circumvents this problem. We show how to perform controllable reconstructions of the spectral density over a finite energy resolution with rigorous error estimates. An appropriate expansion in Chebyshev polynomials allows for efficient simulations also on classical computers. We apply our idea to reconstruct a simple model -- response function as a proof of principle. This paves the way for future applications in nuclear and condensed matter physics., Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures

Conventional methods of quantum simulation involve trade-offs that limit their applicability to specific contexts where their use is optimal. In particular, the interaction picture simulation has been found to provide substantial asymptotic advantages for some Hamiltonians, but incurs prohibitive constant factors and is incompatible with methods like qubitization. We provide a framework that allows different simulation methods to be hybridized and thereby improve performance for interaction picture simulations over known algorithms. These approaches show asymptotic improvements over the individual methods that comprise them and further make interaction picture simulation methods practical in the near term. Physical applications of these hybridized methods yield a gate complexity scaling as $\log^2 \Lambda$ in the electric cutoff $\Lambda$ for the Schwinger Model and independent of the electron density for collective neutrino oscillations, outperforming the scaling for all current algorithms with these parameters. For the general problem of Hamiltonian simulation subject to dynamical constraints, these methods yield a query complexity independent of the penalty parameter $\lambda$ used to impose an energy cost on time-evolution into an unphysical subspace.

Advances in isolating, controlling and entangling quantum systems are transforming what was once a curious feature of quantum mechanics into a vehicle for disruptive scientific and technological progress. Pursuing the vision articulated by Feynman, a concerted effort across many areas of research and development is introducing prototypical digital quantum devices into the computing ecosystem available to domain scientists. Through interactions with these early quantum devices, the abstract vision of exploring classically-intractable quantum systems is evolving toward becoming a tangible reality. Beyond catalyzing these technological advances, entanglement is enabling parallel progress as a diagnostic for quantum correlations and as an organizational tool, both guiding improved understanding of quantum many-body systems and quantum field theories defining and emerging from the Standard Model. From the perspective of three domain science theorists, this article compiles thoughts about the interface on entanglement, complexity, and quantum simulation in an effort to contextualize recent NISQ-era progress with the scientific objectives of nuclear and high-energy physics., Comment: 63 pages, 5 figures

In this work we present the Scaled QUantum IDentifier (SQUID), an open-source framework for exploring hybrid Quantum-Classical algorithms for classification problems. The classical infrastructure is based on PyTorch and we provide a standardized design to implement a variety of quantum models with the capability of back-propagation for efficient training. We present the structure of our framework and provide examples of using SQUID in a standard binary classification problem from the popular MNIST dataset. In particular, we highlight the implications for scalability for gradient-based optimization of quantum models on the choice of output for variational quantum models., Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, accepted version

Collective neutrino oscillations can potentially play an important role in transporting lepton flavor in astrophysical scenarios where the neutrino density is large, typical examples are the early universe and supernova explosions. It has been argued in the past that simple models of the neutrino Hamiltonian designed to describe forward scattering can support substantial flavor evolution on very short time scales $t\approx\log(N)/(G_F\rho_\nu)$, with $N$ the number of neutrinos, $G_F$ the Fermi constant and $\rho_\nu$ the neutrino density. This finding is in tension with results for similar but exactly solvable models for which $t\approx\sqrt{N}/(G_F\rho_\nu)$ instead. In this work we provide a coherent explanation of this tension in terms of Dynamical Phase Transitions (DPT) and study the possible impact that a DPT could have in more realistic models of neutrino oscillations and their mean-field approximation., Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures

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., Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures

Evolution in imaginary time is a prominent technique for finding the ground state of quantum many-body systems, and the heart of a number of numerical methods that have been used with great success in quantum chemistry, condensed matter and nuclear physics. We propose an algorithm to implement imaginary time propagation on a quantum computer. Our algorithm is devised in the context of an efficient encoding into an optimized gate, drawing on the underlying characteristics of the quantum device, of a unitary operation in an extended Hilbert space. However, we proved that for simple problems it can be successfully applied to standard digital quantum machines. This work paves the way for porting quantum many-body methods based on imaginary-time propagation to near-term quantum devices, enabling the future quantum simulation of the ground states of a broad class of microscopic systems., Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables

Collective neutrino oscillations play a crucial role in transporting lepton flavor in astrophysical settings, such as supernovae, where the neutrino density is large. In this regime, neutrino-neutrino interactions are important and simulations in the mean-field approximation show evidence for collective oscillations occurring at time scales much larger than those associated with vacuum oscillations. In this work, we study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of a corresponding spin model using Matrix Product States and show how collective bipolar oscillations can be triggered by many-body correlations if appropriate initial conditions are present. We find entanglement entropies scaling at most logarithmically in the system size suggesting that classical tensor network methods could be efficient in describing collective neutrino dynamics more generally. These observation provide a clear path forward, not only to increase the accuracy of current simulations, but also to elucidate the mechanism behind collective flavor oscillations without resorting to the mean field approximation., Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, added discussion on numerical errors and a direct comparison with mean field, published version

We study two different methods to prepare excited states on a quantum computer, a key initial step to study dynamics within linear response theory. The first method uses unitary evolution for a short time $T=\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{1-F})$ to approximate the action of an excitation operator $\hat{O}$ with fidelity $F$ and success probability $P\approx1-F$. The second method probabilistically applies the excitation operator using the Linear Combination of Unitaries (LCU) algorithm. We benchmark these techniques on emulated and real quantum devices, using a toy model for thermal neutron-proton capture. Despite its larger memory footprint, the LCU-based method is efficient even on current generation noisy devices and can be implemented at a lower gate cost than a naive analysis would suggest. These findings show that quantum techniques designed to achieve good asymptotic scaling on fault tolerant quantum devices might also provide practical benefits on devices with limited connectivity and gate fidelity., Comment: 25 pages, 19 figures (some circuits shown as figures); small modifications; title changed; version accepted for publication

Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBM) are simple statistical models defined on a bipartite graph which have been successfully used in studying more complicated many-body systems, both classical and quantum. In this work, we exploit the representation power of RBMs to provide an exact decomposition of many-body contact interactions into one-body operators coupled to discrete auxiliary fields. This construction generalizes the well known Hirsch's transform used for the Hubbard model to more complicated theories such as Pionless EFT in nuclear physics, which we analyze in detail. We also discuss possible applications of our mapping for quantum annealing applications and conclude with some implications for RBM parameter optimization through machine learning.

The spectral density operator $\hat{\rho}(\omega)=\delta(\omega-\hat{H})$ plays a central role in linear response theory as its expectation value, the dynamical response function, can be used to compute scattering cross-sections. In this work, we describe a near optimal quantum algorithm providing an approximation to the spectral density with energy resolution $\Delta$ and error $\epsilon$ using $\mathcal{O}\left(\sqrt{\log\left(1/\epsilon\right)\left(\log\left(1/\Delta\right)+\log\left(1/\epsilon\right)\right)}/\Delta\right)$ operations. This is achieved without using expensive approximations to the time-evolution operator but exploiting instead qubitization to implement an approximate Gaussian Integral Transform (GIT) of the spectral density. We also describe appropriate error metrics to assess the quality of spectral function approximations more generally., Comment: 12 pages - published version

Neutrino-nucleus cross section uncertainties are expected to be a dominant systematic in future accelerator neutrino experiments. The cross sections are determined by the linear response of the nucleus to the weak interactions of the neutrino, and are dominated by energy and distance scales of the order of the separation between nucleons in the nucleus. These response functions are potentially an important early physics application of quantum computers. Here we present an analysis of the resources required and their expected scaling for scattering cross section calculations. We also examine simple small-scale neutrino-nucleus models on modern quantum hardware. In this paper, we use variational methods to obtain the ground state of a three nucleon system (the triton) and then implement the relevant time evolution. In order to tame the errors in present-day NISQ devices, we explore the use of different error-mitigation techniques to increase the fidelity of the calculations., Comment: 23 pages, 16 figures

The evaluation of expectation values $Tr\left[\rho O\right]$ for some pure state $\rho$ and Hermitian operator $O$ is of central importance in a variety of quantum algorithms. Near optimal techniques developed in the past require a number of measurements $N$ approaching the Heisenberg limit $N=\mathcal{O}\left(1/\epsilon\right)$ as a function of target accuracy $\epsilon$. The use of Quantum Phase Estimation requires however long circuit depths $C=\mathcal{O}\left(1/\epsilon\right)$ making their implementation difficult on near term noisy devices. The more direct strategy of Operator Averaging is usually preferred as it can be performed using $N=\mathcal{O}\left(1/\epsilon^2\right)$ measurements and no additional gates besides those needed for the state preparation. In this work we use a simple but realistic model to describe the bound state of a neutron and a proton (the deuteron) and show that the latter strategy can require an overly large number of measurement in order to achieve a reasonably small relative target accuracy $\epsilon_r$. We propose to overcome this problem using a single step of QPE and classical post-processing. This approach leads to a circuit depth $C=\mathcal{O}\left(\epsilon^\mu\right)$ (with $\mu\geq0$) and to a number of measurements $N=\mathcal{O}\left(1/\epsilon^{2+\nu}\right)$ for $0<\nu\leq1$. We provide detailed descriptions of two implementations of our strategy for $\nu=1$ and $\nu\approx0.5$ and derive appropriate conditions that a particular problem instance has to satisfy in order for our method to provide an advantage.

This whitepaper is an outcome of the workshop Intersections between Nuclear Physics and Quantum Information held at Argonne National Laboratory on 28-30 March 2018 [www.phy.anl.gov/npqi2018/]. The workshop brought together 116 national and international experts in nuclear physics and quantum information science to explore opportunities for the two fields to collaborate on topics of interest to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics, and more broadly to U.S. society and industry. The workshop consisted of 22 invited and 10 contributed talks, as well as three panel discussion sessions. Topics discussed included quantum computation, quantum simulation, quantum sensing, nuclear physics detectors, nuclear many-body problem, entanglement at collider energies, and lattice gauge theories., Comment: 22 pages, Outcome of the workshop: Intersections between Nuclear Physics and Quantum Information

The dynamic linear response of a quantum system is critical for understanding both the structure and dynamics of strongly-interacting quantum systems, including neutron scattering from materials, photon and electron scattering from atomic systems, and electron and neutrino scattering by nuclei. We present a general algorithm for quantum computers to calculate the dynamic linear response function with controlled errors and to obtain information about specific final states that can be directly compared to experimental observations., Comment: Fixed acknowledgements

The behavior of QCD at high baryon density and low temperature is crucial to understanding the properties of neutron stars and gravitational waves emitted during their mergers. In this paper we study small systems of baryons in periodic boundary conditions to probe the properties of QCD at high baryon density. By comparing calculations based on nucleon degrees of freedom to simple quark models we show that specific features of the nuclear spectrum, including shell structure and nucleon pairing, emerge if nucleons are the primary degrees of freedom. Very small systems should also be amenable to studies in lattice QCD, unlike larger systems where the fermion sign problem is much more severe. Through comparisons of lattice QCD and nuclear calculations it should be possible to gain, at at least a semi-quantitative level, more understanding of the cold dense equation of state as probed in neutron stars., Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, 1 table

We find that the abundance of large clusters of nucleons in neutron-rich matter at sub-nuclear density is greatly reduced by finite temperature effects when matter is close to beta-equilibrium. Large nuclei and exotic non-spherical nuclear configurations called pasta, favored in the vicinity of the transition to uniform matter at $T=0$, dissolve at relatively low temperature. For matter close to beta-equilibrium we find that the pasta melting temperature is $T_m^\beta\simeq 4\pm 1$~MeV for realistic equations of state. The mechanism for pasta dissolution is discussed, and in general $T_m^\beta$ is shown to be sensitive to the proton fraction. We find that coherent neutrino scattering from nuclei and pasta makes a modest contribution to the opacity under the conditions encountered in supernovae and neutron star mergers. Implications for neutrino signals from galactic supernovae are briefly discussed., Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, 1 table

A new method is proposed for determining the ground state wave function of a quantum many-body system on a quantum computer, without requiring an initial trial wave function that has good overlap with the true ground state. The technique of Spectral Combing involves entangling an arbitrary initial wave function with a set of auxiliary qubits governed by a time dependent Hamiltonian, resonantly transferring energy out of the initial state through a plethora of avoided level crossings into the auxiliary system. The number of avoided level crossings grows exponentially with the number of qubits required to represent the Hamiltonian, so that the efficiency of the algorithm does not rely on any particular energy gap being large. We give an explicit construction of the quantum gates required for the realization of this procedure and explore the results of classical simulations of the algorithm on a small quantum computer with up to 8 qubits. We show that for certain systems and comparable results, Spectral Combing requires fewer quantum gates to realize than the Quantum Adiabatic Algorithm.

We calculate the thermal conductivity of electrons for the strongly correlated multi-component ion plasma expected in the outer layers of neutron star's crust employing a Path Integral Monte Carlo (PIMC) approach. This allows us to isolate the low energy response of the ions and use it to calculate the electron scattering rate and the electron thermal conductivity. We find that the scattering rate is enhanced by a factor 2-4 compared to earlier calculations based on the simpler electron-impurity scattering formalism. This findings directly impacts the interpretation of thermal relaxation observed in transiently accreting neutron stars and has implications for the composition and nuclear reactions in the crust that occur during accretion., Comment: Revised version addressing referee comments

We explore the use of mean field models to approximate microscopic nuclear equations of state derived from chiral effective field theory across the densities and temperatures relevant for simu- lating astrophysical phenomena such as core-collapse supernovae and binary neutron star mergers. We consider both relativistic mean field theory with scalar and vector meson exchange as well as energy density functionals based on Skyrme phenomenology and compare to thermodynamic equa- tions of state derived from chiral two- and three-nucleon forces in many-body perturbation theory. Quantum Monte Carlo simulations of symmetric nuclear matter and pure neutron matter are used to determine the density regimes in which perturbation theory with chiral nuclear forces is valid. Within the theoretical uncertainties associated with the many-body methods, we find that select mean field models describe well microscopic nuclear thermodynamics. As an additional consistency requirement, we study as well the single-particle properties of nucleons in a hot/dense environment, which affect e.g., charged-current weak reactions in neutron-rich matter. The identified mean field models can be used across a larger range of densities and temperatures in astrophysical simulations than more computationally expensive microscopic models.

We study the problem of an impurity in fully polarized (spin-up) low density neutron matter with the help of an accurate quantum Monte Carlo method in conjunction with a realistic nucleon-nucleon interaction derived from chiral effective field theory at next-to-next-to-leading-order. Our calculations show that the behavior of the proton spin-down impurity is very similar to that of a polaron in a fully polarized unitary Fermi gas. We show that our results can be used to put tight constraints on the time-odd parts of the energy density functional, independent of the time-even parts, in the density regime relevant to neutron-rich nuclei and compact astrophysical objects such as neutron stars and supernovae., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

We present fully non-perturbative quantum Monte Carlo calculations with non-local chiral effective field theory (EFT) interactions for the ground state properties of neutron matter. The equation of state, the nucleon chemical potentials and the momentum distribution in pure neutron matter up to one and a half times the nuclear saturation density are computed with a newly optimized chiral EFT interaction at next-to-next-to-leading order. This work opens the way to systematic order by order benchmarking of chiral EFT interactions, and \emph{ab initio} prediction of nuclear properties while respecting the symmetries of quantum chromodynamics., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 1 table

We introduce a novel many body method which combines two powerful many body techniques, viz., quantum Monte Carlo and coupled cluster theory. Coupled cluster wave functions are introduced as importance functions in a Monte Carlo method designed for the configuration interaction framework to provide rigorous upper bounds to the ground state energy. We benchmark our method on the homogeneous electron gas in momentum space. The importance function used is the coupled cluster doubles wave function. We show that the computational resources required in our method scale polynomially with system size. Our energy upper bounds are in very good agreement with previous calculations of similar accuracy, and they can be systematically improved by including higher order excitations in the coupled cluster wave function., Comment: Submitted to Physical Review Letters

An ab-initio method for determining the dynamical structure function of an interacting many--body quantum system has been devised by combining a generalized integral transform method with Quantum Monte Carlo methods. As a first application, the coherent and, separately, the incoherent excitation spectrum of bulk atomic 4He has been computed, both in the low and intermediate momentum range. The peculiar form of the kernel in the integral transform of the dynamical structure function allows to predict, without using any model, both position and width of the collective excitations in the maxon--roton region, as well as the second collective peak. A prediction of the dispersion of the single--particle modes described by the incoherent part is also presented., Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures