Benchmarking Non-Abelian Lattice Gauge Theories with NISQ Algorithms

Non-Abelian gauge theories are at the heart of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, and can be treated numerically with a lattice regularization scheme. Computing the real-time dynamics of lattice gauge theories remains computationally intractable, as the only known classical algorithms are NP-complex. The discovery of polynomial quantum simulation algorithms [Lloyd, 1995], represents a promising alternative, provided scalable quantum computing platforms can be engineered. \small(1+1)\normalsize-dimensional \textit{\small SU(2) \normalsize fermionic gauge theory} (\small{SU2FGT}\normalsize) can be efficiently mapped to a quantum platform with limited qubit-connectivity, and represents the perfect testbed for benchmarking classically intractable computations on \textit{noisy intermediate-scale quantum} (\small{NISQ}\normalsize) hardware. In this work, the real-time dynamics of \small(1+1)\normalsize-\small SU2FGT \normalsize is simulated on \small IBM's \normalsize\text{\small{$5$}}-qubit quantum platform family. To amplify the range of accessible real-time dynamics, a set of newly-developed hybrid quantum algorithms are applied to subsidize coherence-limited quantum hardware with classical resources.