Quantum computation of heavy quarkonium masses

Abstract

We perform a quantum calculation of the 1S charmonium mass by simulating the spinless Cornell Hamiltonian on a quantum processor using a variational method. Errors due to a global depolarizing noise channel are corrected with a zero-noise extrapolation method, resulting in good agreement with the known value. We also calculate the 2S mass of charmonium on a noiseless quantum simulator by orthogonalizing with respect to the ground state. This research demonstrates that near-term quantum devices are capable of simulating heavy quark bound states, which are currently under-represented in the literature.