Abstract

High quality simulated data is crucial for the interpretation of measurements from high energy collisions at collider experiments, with QCD parton showers forming an important statistical component of modern event generators. With the impressive progress in quantum technology, quantum computers provide an interesting opportunity for high energy particle physics. The ability of the quantum device to naturally incorporate quantum phenomena offers an exciting potential for improving the simulation of particle physics, increasing the physics capabilities and efficiencies of modern event generators.

In this talk I present a novel approach to simulating the parton showering process using the Discrete QCD model, and thus generating collider events on a Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) device. The algorithm benefits from an elegant quantum walk implementation, embedded in a classical toolchain. Due to the statistical nature of the shower process, it has been shown that the noise from the device is not a primary concern, and the description of LEP data is encouraging. This is the first quantum algorithm with the ability to simulate realistic, high-energy particle collision events using a NISQ device.