Quantum simulation of cosmic inflation

In this paper, we generalize Jordan-Lee-Preskill, an algorithm for simulating flat-space quantum field theories, to 3 + 1 dimensional inflationary spacetime. The generalized algorithm contains the encoding treatment, the initial state preparation, the inflation process, and the quantum measurement of cosmological observables at late time. The algorithm is helpful for obtaining predictions of cosmic non-Gaussianities, serving as useful benchmark problems for quantum devices, and checking assumptions made about interacting vacuum in the inflationary perturbation theory. Components of our work also include a detailed discussion about the lattice regularization of the cosmic perturbation theory, a detailed discussion about the in-in formalism, a discussion about encoding using the Hamilton-Kabat-Lifschytz-Lowe-type formula that might apply for both dS and AdS spacetimes, a discussion about bounding curvature perturbations, a description of the three-party Trotter simulation algorithm for time-dependent Hamiltonians, a ground state projection algorithm for simulating gapless theories, a discussion about the quantum-extended Church-Turing thesis, and a discussion about simulating cosmic reheating in quantum devices.

Automated summary

This paper generalizes the Jordan-Lee-Preskill algorithm to 3 + 1 dimensional inflationary spacetime for simulating flat-space quantum field theories, with additional discussions on various related topics and algorithms.