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Physics Colloquium: Zohreh Davoudi (University of Maryland), A quantum simulator of the strong force

Event Type
Lecture
Sponsor
Department of Physics
Virtual
wifi event
Date
Mar 30, 2022   4:00 pm  
Speaker
Zohreh Davoudi, University of Maryland
Contact
Kelly Darr
E-Mail
khdarr@illinois.edu
Phone
12173007821
Views
90
Originating Calendar
Physics - Colloquium

Abstract: The strong force in nature, described by the quantum and relativistic framework of quantum chromodynamics or QCD, has long generated an active and growing field of research and discovery. In fact, despite its development over five decades ago, it still leaves us with many exciting questions to explore in the 21st century, with a multi-billion-dollar experimental investment that aims to understand the core of matter: What is the phase diagram of matter governed by strong interactions? How does matter evolve and thermalize in the early universe or in particle colliders? How do elementary particles in QCD, quarks and gluons, and their interactions give rise to the complex structure of a proton or a nucleus, and how do these states interact with candidates of beyond the Standard Model physics? While an extremely successful theoretical and computational program called lattice QCD has enabled a first-principles look into some properties of matter, we have yet to come up with a computationally more capable tool to predict the complex dynamics of matter from the underlying interactions. Can a large reliable (digital or analog) quantum simulator eventually enable us to study the strong force? What does a quantum simulator have to offer to simulate QCD and how far away are we from such a dream? In this talk, I will describe a vision for how we may go on a journey toward quantum simulating QCD, by taking insights from early developments of lattice QCD, by motivating the need for novel theoretical, algorithmic, and hardware approaches to quantum-simulating this unique problem, and by providing examples of the early steps taken to date in establishing a quantum-computational lattice-QCD program.

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