Application of a Quantum Search Algorithm to High- Energy Physics Data at the Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

We demonstrate a novel method for applying a scientific quantum algorithm - the Grover Algorithm (GA) - to search for rare events in proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV collision energy using CERN's Large Hadron Collider. The search is of an unsorted database from the ATLAS detector in the form of ATLAS Open Data. As indicated by the Higgs boson decay channel $H\to Z{Z}^{\ast }\to 4l$, the detection of four leptons in one event may be used to reconstruct the Higgs boson and, more importantly, evince Higgs boson decay to some new phenomena, such as $H\to Z{Z}_d\to 4l$. In searching the dataset for collisions resulting in the detection of four leptons, the study demonstrates the effectiveness and potential of applying quantum computing to high-energy particle physics. Using a Jupyter Notebook, a classical simulation of GA, and multiple quantum computers, each with several qubits, it is demonstrated that this application makes the proper selection in the unsorted dataset. The implementation of the method on several classical simulators and on several of IBM's quantum computers using the IBM Qiskit Open Source Software exhibits the promising prospects of quantum computing in high-energy physics.

11 pages, 11 figures

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• Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
• Higgs boson decays to four fermions through an abelian hidden sector
• Higgs Decays as a Window into the Dark Sector
• Introduction to Quantum Algorithms
• Simple Algorithm for Partial Quantum Search
• Search for new light gauge bosons in Higgs boson decays to four-lepton final states in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Quantum walk approach to simulating parton showers
• Quantum speedup for track reconstruction in particle accelerators