Quantum simulation of bottomonium dynamics in the quark-gluon plasma via the Lindblad equation

Abstract

Quantum computing provides a powerful framework for simulating real-time dynamics in open quantum systems, offering key advantages for modeling heavy-quarkonium transport in high-energy nuclear collisions. In this work, we perform quantum simulations of the isotropic next-to-leading-order Lindblad equation for bottomonium in the quark-gluon plasma using a reduced spherical coordinate representation. We discretize operators and wavefunctions, map the physical state onto qubits, and execute time evolution via parameterized quantum gate operations. By extracting the $\Upsilon(1S)$ survival probability, we quantitatively isolate the color-octet contribution, demonstrating that its overall impact is small in the final production of the bottomonium ground state $\Upsilon(1S)$ in the hot QCD medium at temperatures accessible at the Large Hadron Collider. Additionally, we have further optimized the quantum simulation algorithm for the Lindblad equation. The improved algorithm requires only a single ancillary qubit to realize the Lindblad evolution, thereby minimizing the circuit significantly.