Systematic VQE benchmarking of the deuteron, triton, and helium-3 within lattice pionless effective field theory
European Physical Journal A, cilt.62, sa.9, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 62 Sayı: 9
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1140/epja/s10050-026-01939-9
- Dergi Adı: European Physical Journal A
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Aerospace Database, Chemical Abstracts Core, Compendex, INSPEC, zbMATH, Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCO), Engineering Source (EBSCO), Materials Science & Engineering Collection (ProQuest), Technology Collection (ProQuest)
- Açık Arşiv Koleksiyonu: AVESİS Açık Erişim Koleksiyonu
- Sivas Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
We investigate the performance of quantum algorithms for light nuclear systems by studying the deuteron (2H), triton (3H), and helium-3 (3He) nuclei within a lattice formulation of pionless effective field theory (EFT). We first compute ground-state energies using classical exact diagonalization (ED), serving as a benchmark reference for variational quantum algorithms. We then perform Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) calculations using noiseless statevector simulations of quantum circuits, enabling a controlled assessment of algorithmic performance in the absence of hardware-induced noise. We calibrate the two-body low-energy constant using the deuteron system and fit the three-body interaction strength to the triton, then consistently apply the resulting Hamiltonian parameters to the helium-3 nucleus. Our VQE calculations employ physically motivated ansätze targeting the relevant particle-number sectors, with explicit particle-number-conserving constructions implemented for the triton and helium-3 systems. The variational optimization includes an analysis of the Hamiltonian energy variance, ⟨H2⟩−⟨H⟩2, providing insight into convergence behavior and the quality of the variational states. The deuteron VQE energy agrees with the ED reference within the reported numerical precision, whereas the triton and helium-3 calculations retain deviations of 0.1016 MeV and 0.1128 MeV, respectively, together with nonzero Hamiltonian variances. The results therefore provide a controlled, one-dimensional small-system benchmark of the implemented VQE workflow rather than a demonstration of quantum advantage, scalability, or independent validation of the nuclear interaction. Additionally, we perform noisy evaluations of noiseless-optimized triton circuits using a depolarizing noise model to illustrate the impact of representative Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ)-era hardware noise on variational energy estimation.