Random Interactions

From sign problems to a quantum computer

by Prof. David Kaplan (Institute for Nuclear Theory, Seattle)

Wednesday, October 11, 2017 from to (Asia/Kolkata)
at AG69
Description
Quantum many-body systems are often plagued by sign problems that make solving the theory a computationally hard problem on classical computers, where the computational difficulty scales exponentially with the number of degrees of freedom.  I show why this is the case for QCD at nonzero chemical potential. For certain computational problems it is known that quantum computers can provide exponential speed-up relative classical computers, and so it is natural to wonder if they can solve sign problems. I outline some old and new approaches to finding the quantum many-body ground state on a quantum computer.