IBM Quantum blog: Simulating the universe's most extreme environments with utility-scale quantum computation

On the IBM Quantum blog, a team of physicists from the University of Washington and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory offer a detailed, layman-friendly explanation of their research using utility-scale IBM Quantum hardware (100+ qubits) to develop techniques for simulating high-energy particle collisions.

Computer simulations of these and other fundamental physics processes and theories play an essential role in modern physics research. However, many of the scientific community’s most important research questions require simulations that are much too complex for even the most powerful classical supercomputers.

The University of Washington and Berkeley Lab researchers believe quantum computers could be the key to unlocking quantum simulations that are entirely inaccessible to classical methods — simulations that demonstrate what we call quantum advantage. More than that, they suggest that simulations demonstrating quantum advantage may potentially be within reach of the quantum hardware we already have today.

In the blog, the researchers provide a fascinating overview of the physics processes their research simulates, and a step-by-step explanation of the simulation method they developed. They also detail how Qiskit software tools like the Sampler primitive and the Session execution mode made their experiments possible. The story they tell could serve as a useful blueprint to inspire the research of other computational scientists.