Quantum Algorithms for Jet Clustering

Understand

Identifying jets formed in high-energy particle collisions requires solving optimization problems over potentially large numbers of final-state particles.

• In this work, we consider the possibility of using quantum computers to speed up jet clustering algorithms.
• Focusing on the case of electron-positron collisions, we consider a well-known event shape called thrust whose optimum corresponds to the most jet-like separating plane among a set of particles, thereby defining two hemisphere jets.
• We show how to formulate thrust both as a quantum annealing problem and as a Grover search problem.