Quantum computers are beginning to become powerful tools for studying some of the most fundamental forces in the universe – and some of the trickiest to understand. Two experiments have used them to pave a new way forward for nuclear and particle physics. “We have this sort of grand scheme where we eventually want to do quantum computing for high-energy physics,” says Torsten Zache at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. “There’s a strong consensus that large-scale quantum computers will actually be able to solve problems that are otherwise intractable.” He and his colleagues used a quantum computer to simulate how excited particles – those with lots of energy – behave in quantum fields, a situation akin to the conditions they experience in particle accelerators. Pedram Roushan at Google and his colleagues ran a similar simulation on a different quantum computer. While conventional computers can typically only capture snapshots of particles’ behaviour, the new simulations show how they behave over time, a bit like making a movie. Roushan says it all starts with quantum fields, which extend through space and exert forces on particles. His team wanted to simulate the electromagnetic field, but there was an added challenge of ensuring that the simulated field didn’t just apply everywhere, but also that it correctly affected particles when zooming in on just a few.

Full research : Using quantum computers, simulations of high-energy particles are pushing the boundaries of what we can learn about the interactions that happen inside particle colliders.