Quantum Annealing Tackles Complex Nuclear Physics Calculations

Scientists have developed a new hybrid quantum-classical algorithm to solve large-scale eigenvalue problems, a crucial requirement in nuclear many-body theory where Hamiltonian matrices often reach exceptionally large dimensions. The method combines quantum annealing and classical deflation to iteratively determine the complete eigenspectrum of both standard and generalised eigenvalue problems. This approach was benchmarked using problems originating from the Equation of Motion Phonon Method, performing calculations on actual quantum hardware and illuminating both the potential and current limitations of near-term quantum devices for tackling complex nuclear physics calculations. A significant performance boost is achieved with a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm, attaining machine-precision accuracy on…