Toward Quantum Simulations of $\mathbb{Z}_2$ Gauge Theory Without State Preparation

Understand

Preparing strongly-coupled particle states on quantum computers requires large resources.

• In this work, we show how classical sampling coupled with projection operators can be used to compute Minkowski matrix elements without explicitly preparing these states on the quantum computer.
• We demonstrate this for the 2+1d $\mathbb{Z}_2$ lattice gauge theory on small lattices with a quantum simulator.