Simon Williams (Imperial College London)

High quality simulated data is crucial for the interpretation of measurements from high energy collisions at collider experiments. Parton showers are one of the cornerstones of data synthesis in modern event generator programs, however the core algorithms used to implement the parton shower have remained largely unchanged since the 1980s. With the rapid and continuous improvement in quantum computers, these devices present an exciting opportunity for high energy physics. Dedicated quantum algorithms are needed to exploit the potential that quantum computers can provide. In this talk I present a novel approach to synthesising parton showers using the Discrete QCD method. The algorithm benefits from an elegant quantum walk implementation which is embedded in a classical toolchain. The IBM Q Algiers Falcon r5.11 quantum computer has been used to generate parton shower configurations and generate data comparable to measurements taken at the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider. This is the first quantum algorithm with the ability to simulate realistic high-energy particle collision events using a Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) device.