Prospects and Challenges for Realizing Hybrid Digital/Analog Quantum Simulations Through Optimal Control

Quantum computers will usher in a new era in simulating quantum many-body systems, bringing us to a deeper and more complete understanding of structure, dynamics, and responses of strongly interacting systems, such as atomic nuclei, and how those systems interact with other forms of matter. Even with the tremendous strides that digital quantum computers have made in the past few years, noise and imprecision continue to inhibit the realization nearly all formal quantum algorithms for simulating physical systems beyond even the simplest models. Instead, hybrid digital-analog quantum computation, where the discrete quantum processor primitives are tailored to both the theoretical system being simulated and the physical quantum processor performing the simulations, offers a path to useful computation that can be realized within the near-term noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era. I will discuss the current state of applying optimal control to implement such hybrid computations on super conducting transmon computers with a focus on simulations of the real-time dynamics of interaction neutrons and model spin systems and discuss the challenges and prospects for scaling such computations to larger systems.