Simulating the Spread of Infection in Networks with Quantum Computers

We propose to use quantum computers to simulate infection spreading in networks. We first show the analogy between the infection distribution and spin-lattice configurations with Ising-type interactions. Then, since the spreading process can be modeled as a classical Markovian process, we show that the spreading process can be simulated using the evolution of a quantum thermal dynamic model with a parameterized Hamiltonian. In particular, we analytically and numerically analyze the evolution behavior of the Hamiltonian, and prove that the evolution simulates a classical Markovian process, which describes the well-known epidemiological stochastic susceptible and infectious (SI) model. A practical method to determine the parameters of the thermal dynamic Hamiltonian from epidemiological inputs is exhibited. As an example, we simulate the infection spreading process of the SARS-Cov-2 variant Omicron in a small-world network.