High-Energy Physics into an Era of Fault-Tolerant and Error-Corrected Quantum Computing

Coordinators: Mari Carmen Banuls, Enrique Rico Ortega, Enrico Rinaldi, and Martin Savage

Scientific Advisors: Monika Aidelsburger, Ken Brown, Christian Bauer, Ignacio Cirac, and Chris Wilson

The program will bring together researchers from high-energy physics, quantum information science, quantum algorithms, and hardware development to define a path toward quantum advantage for key HEP problems. As quantum platforms begin transitioning from the NISQ era to logical qubits with increasing degrees of fault tolerance and error correction, this program will explore how HEP applications can be accelerated by and drive the co-design of hardware, encodings, algorithms, and error-correction strategies. The scientific focus includes real-time dynamics in gauge theories, non-equilibrium early-universe phenomena, uncertainty quantification in quantum simulations, and methods for verification beyond classical tractability. Progress will be made toward identifying and advancing concrete benchmark problems, such as 1+1D and 2+1D non-Abelian gauge theories, and developing end-to-end resource estimates that incorporate logical qubit counts, code distances, circuit depth, systematic errors, and hardware constraints. A central goal is to build a shared roadmap for fault-tolerant and error-corrected quantum simulations in HEP, while also identifying ways in which HEP theory can inform broader advances in quantum information science.