Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Towards a quantum computing algorithm for helicity amplitudes and parton showers

Bepari, Khadeejah; Malik, Sarah; Spannowsky, Michael; Williams, Simon

Towards a quantum computing algorithm for helicity amplitudes and parton showers Thumbnail


Authors

Sarah Malik

Simon Williams



Abstract

The interpretation of measurements of high-energy particle collisions relies heavily on the performance of full event generators, which include the calculation of the hard process and the subsequent parton shower step. With the continuous improvement of quantum devices, dedicated algorithms are needed to exploit the potential quantum that computers can provide. We propose general and extendable algorithms for quantum gate computers to facilitate calculations of helicity amplitudes and the parton shower process. The helicity amplitude calculation exploits the equivalence between spinors and qubits and the unique features of a quantum computer to compute the helicities of each particle involved simultaneously, thus fully utilizing the quantum nature of the computation. This advantage over classical computers is further exploited by the simultaneous computation of s- and t-channel amplitudes for a 2 → 2 process. The parton shower algorithm simulates collinear emission for a two-step, discrete parton shower. In contrast to classical implementations, the quantum algorithm constructs a wave function with a superposition of all shower histories for the whole parton shower process, thus removing the need to explicitly keep track of individual shower histories. Both algorithms utilize the quantum computers ability to remain in a quantum state throughout the computation and represent a first step towards a quantum computing algorithm describing the full collision event at the LHC.

Citation

Bepari, K., Malik, S., Spannowsky, M., & Williams, S. (2021). Towards a quantum computing algorithm for helicity amplitudes and parton showers. Physical Review D, 103(7), Article 076020. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.103.076020

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 18, 2021
Online Publication Date Apr 26, 2021
Publication Date 2021
Deposit Date Sep 13, 2021
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Physical Review D
Print ISSN 2470-0010
Electronic ISSN 2470-0029
Publisher American Physical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 103
Issue 7
Article Number 076020
DOI https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.103.076020

Files

Published Journal Article (1.8 Mb)
PDF

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.





You might also like



Downloadable Citations