Solving Nuclear Structure Problems with the Adaptive Variational Quantum Algorithm

Understand

We use the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick (LMG) model and the valence-space nuclear shell model to examine the likely performance of variational quantum eigensolvers in nuclear-structure theory.

• The LMG model exhibits both a phase transition and spontaneous symmetry breaking at the mean-field level in one of the phases, features that characterize collective dynamics in medium-mass and heavy nuclei.
• We show that with appropriate modifications, the ADAPT-VQE algorithm, a particularly flexible and accurate variational approach, is not troubled by these complications.
• We treat up to 12 particles and show that the number of quantum operations needed to approach the ground-state energy scales linearly with the number of qubits.