IonQ simulates process linked to matter-antimatter imbalance

IonQ (IONQ) announced the first known simulation using a quantum computer of a process called “neutrinoless double-beta decay” with implications for understanding the universe’s imbalance between matter and antimatter. The company said, “The Big Bang should have made equal amounts of matter and antimatter. However, almost everything we see is made of matter, and there’s very little antimatter around. One of the biggest questions in physics is: what happened to the missing antimatter? Scientists are looking for the root cause of this imbalance to uncover insights into the fundamental laws of physics. Using IonQ’s Forte Enterprise quantum system, researchers observed in real-time what’s known as a “lepton-number violation,” a phenomenon never directly simulated before on a quantum computer, providing further evidence that quantum computers may be able to model fundamental physics processes beyond the reach of classical systems. This demonstration opens a new path in the global efforts to understand why the universe is composed predominantly of matter rather than antimatter. The hypothesized “neutrinoless double-beta decay” nuclear process suggests that neutrinos are their own antiparticles and that violates a principle in the Standard Model of particle physics. This technique allows scientists to use quantum computers and simulate the nuclear dynamics on the shortest of time-scales. This is shorter even than the femto-second imaging demonstrations in the 1990s, which gave chemists new insights into chemical reactions, and revealed how atoms re-arrange during the breaking and formation of chemical bonds. Similar scientific breakthroughs could be enabled by this new quantum computing technique, with potential applications to high-energy physics laboratories around the globe.”