Snowmass White Paper: Quantum Computing Systems and Software for High-energy Physics Research

Quantum computing offers a new paradigm for advancing high-energy physics research by enabling novel methods for representing and reasoning about fundamental quantum mechanical phenomena. Realizing these ideals will require the development of novel computational tools for modeling and simulation, detection and classification, data analysis, and forecasting of high-energy physics (HEP) experiments. While the emerging hardware, software, and applications of quantum computing are exciting opportunities, significant gaps remain in integrating such techniques into the HEP community research programs. Here we identify both the challenges and opportunities for developing quantum computing systems and software to advance HEP discovery science. We describe opportunities for the focused development of algorithms, applications, software, hardware, and infrastructure to support both practical and theoretical applications of quantum computing to HEP problems within the next 10 years.
Comment: A contribution to the 2021 Snowmass Proceedings, Computational Frontier, Topical Group on Quantum Computing