Quantum computation of mass gap in an asymptotically free theory

Abstract

In relativistic field theories, the mass spectrum is given by the difference between the energy of the vacuum and the excited states. Near the continuum limit, the cancellation between these two values leads to loss of precision. We propose a method to extract the mass gap directly using quantum computers and apply it to a particular version of the nonlinear $\sigma$-model with the correct continuum limit and perform calculations in quantum hardware (at strong coupling) and simulation in classical computers (at weak coupling).