Quantum computing applied to extreme plasma physics

The main goal of this PhD project is to determine if and where Quantum Computing (QC) can offer an advantage over traditional (classical) methods when solving problems in Extreme Plasma Physics. This is a new and exciting research frontier, where open problems are abundant and well-defined directions are lacking.

Quantum Computing, together with classical Machine Learning (ML), promise new insights into numerical modeling of physical systems, and will potentially work as "accelerators", that is, special-purpose software or devices to run part of a computation that would otherwise be unfeasible (both in memory and time) on ordinary algorithms and CPUs.

 Early results on current quantum computers and quantum simulators are still limited to toy-models or problems that can be easily run on classical HPC, but nevertheless they do show proof-of-concept and clear research directions. One of the goals of this PhD is to demonstrate "experimentally" on current quantum hardware simulations of simple plasms systems, with focus on Strong Field QED regime of interaction.