Quantum computing for heavy quarkonium spectroscopy

Abstract

We report a first demonstration for the application of quantum computing to heavy quarkonium spectroscopy study. Based on a Cornell-potential model for the heavy quark and antiquark system, we show how this Hamiltonian problem can be formulated and solved with the VQE approach on the IBM cloud quantum computing platform. Errors due to a global depolarizing noise channel are corrected with a zero-noise extrapolation method, resulting in good agreement with the expected value. We also extend the calculation to excited states on a noiseless quantum simulator by orthogonalization with respect to the ground state.