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Published June 17, 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Simulating Meson Scattering on Spin Quantum Simulators

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science
  • 2. ROR icon Joint Quantum Institute
  • 3. ROR icon University of Geneva
  • 4. ROR icon University of Oxford
  • 5. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 6. ROR icon University of Chicago
  • 7. ROR icon Duke University
  • 8. ROR icon Cornell University
  • 9. ROR icon University of Maryland, College Park

Abstract

Studying high-energy collisions of composite particles, such as hadrons and nuclei, is an outstanding goal for quantum simulators. However, preparation of hadronic wave packets has posed a significant challenge, due to the complexity of hadrons and the precise structure of wave packets. This has limited demonstrations of hadron scattering on quantum simulators to date. Observations of confinement and composite excitations in quantum spin systems have opened up the possibility to explore scattering dynamics in spin models. In this article, we develop two methods to create entangled spin states corresponding to wave packets of composite particles in analog quantum simulators of Ising spin Hamiltonians. One wave-packet preparation method uses the blockade effect enabled by beyond-nearest-neighbor Ising spin interactions. The other method utilizes a quantum-bus-mediated exchange, such as the native spin-phonon coupling in trapped-ion arrays. With a focus on trapped-ion simulators, we numerically benchmark both methods and show that high-fidelity wave packets can be achieved in near-term experiments. We numerically study scattering of wave packets for experimentally realizable parameters in the Ising model and find inelastic-scattering regimes, corresponding to particle production in the scattering event, with prominent and distinct experimental signals. Our proposal, therefore, demonstrates the potential of observing inelastic scattering in near-term quantum simulators.

Copyright and License

This Paper is published in Quantum under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. Copyright remains with the original copyright holders such as the authors or their institutions.

Acknowledgement

We thank Jeffery Yu for a discussion about preparing wave packets using dispersive quantum-non-demolition coupling. This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, National Quantum Information Science Research Centers, Quantum Systems Accelerator. Additional support is acknowledged from the following agencies. E.R.B. acknowledges support from the DOE, Office of Science Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR), Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (award no. DE-SC0023112). E.R.B., B.W., A.S., R.B., and A.V.G. were supported in part by the NSF STAQ program, NSF QLCI (award no. OMA-2120757), AFOSR MURI, AFOSR, DOE ASCR Quantum Testbed Pathfinder program (awards no. DESC0019040
and DE-SC0024220), DOE ASCR Accelerated Research in Quantum Computing program (awards No. DE-SC0020312 and No. DE-SC0025341), and DARPA SAVaNT ADVENT. F.M.S. acknowledges support provided by the DOE, Office of Science, Office of ASCR (award no. DE-SC0020290), by Amazon Web Services, AWS Quantum Program, and by
the DOE QuantISED program through the theory consortium “Intersections of QIS and Theoretical Particle
Physics” at Fermilab. Z.D. acknowledges funding by the DOE, Office of Science, Early Career Award (award no. DESC0020271), and by the Department of Physics, Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics, and the College
of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is further
grateful for the hospitality of Perimeter Institute where part of this work was carried out. Research at Perimeter Institute is supported in part by the Government of Canada through the Department of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development, and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. Z.D. was also supported in part by the Simons Foundation through the Simons Foundation Emmy Noether Fellows Program at Perimeter Institute.

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Additional details

Related works

Is new version of
Discussion Paper: arXiv:2403.07061 (arXiv)

Funding

United States Department of Energy
DE-SC0023112
National Science Foundation
OMA-2120757
United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research
United States Department of Energy
DE-SC0019040
United States Department of Energy
DE-SC0024220
United States Department of Energy
DE-SC0020312
United States Department of Energy
DE-SC0025341
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
United States Department of Energy
DE-SC0020290
Amazon (United States)
United States Department of Energy
DE-SC0020271
University System of Maryland
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada
Ministry of Colleges and Universities
Simons Foundation

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Caltech groups
AWS Center for Quantum Computing, Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA)
Publication Status
Published