Thermalization of SU(2) Lattice Gauge Fields on Quantum Computers
High Energy Physics - Lattice
2026-04-13 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Nuclear Theory
Quantum Physics
Abstract
We simulate the thermalization dynamics for minimally truncated SU(2) pure gauge theory on linear plaquette chains with up to 151 plaquettes using IBM quantum computers. We study the time dependence of the entanglement spectrum, R\'enyi-2 entropy and anti-flatness on small subsystems. The quantum hardware results obtained after error mitigation agree with extrapolated classical simulator results for chains consisting of up to 101 plaquettes. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of local thermalization studies for chaotic quantum systems, such as nonabelian lattice gauge theories, on current noisy quantum computing platforms.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2603.23948,
title = {Thermalization of SU(2) Lattice Gauge Fields on Quantum Computers},
author = {Jiunn-Wei Chen and Yu-Ting Chen and Ghanashyam Meher and Berndt Müller and Andreas Schäfer and Xiaojun Yao},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.23948},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
15 pages, 15 figures, 4 tables