An approach for calculating astrophysical opacities on quantum computers
Andrew Baczewski
Sandia National Laboratories
Quantum Computer Science
I will describe a quantum algorithmic protocol for calculating astrophysical opacities. It relies on the discretization and simulation of interacting atomic and photonic subsystems. By inferring the opacity from frequency-resolved measurements of the photon register, we can efficiently adapt the resolution to span from single features to entire spectra by adding more qubits. Detailed error budgets and resource estimates will be considered for the classically challenging problem of the opacity of solar iron.
This is joint work with Shivesh Pathak and Alina Kononov at Sandia National Labs (SNL). SNL is managed and operated by NTESS under DOE NNSA contract DE-NA0003525.