CERN Accelerating science

Abstract

With the commissioning of the upgraded LHC-HL machine, High Energy Physics will face a large shortage of computing resources that has been evaluated between a factor 10 and 100. It is therefore necessary to explore all avenues that can lead to an improvement of the performance of HEP software. Quantum Computing has the potential to offer unprecedented performances, but at the price of a fundamental rethinking of our algorithms and, to an extent, computing model. This talk will first introduce the principles of Quantum Computing. It will then present some possible avenues to exploit Quantum Computing for High Energy Physics research and will expand on the projects currently under way or in preparation in connection with the HEP physicist and the major technology providers. In particular we will expand on the areas where we see the greatest potential for “Quantum Dominance” and we will consider what could be the impact of Quantum Computing on the HEP computing model. We will also point out what are the possible usage outside the realm of HEP of the proposed techniques and applications.

Speaker

Federico Carminati is investigating Machine Learning and Quantum Computing for High Energy Physics in the CERN openlab. After getting his Master in Physics at the University of Pavia, Italy in 1981 he worked at Los Alamos and Caltech as particle physicist before being hired by CERN in the Data Handling Division. He was responsible for the CERN Program Library and the GEANT detector simulation programme, the world standard High Energy Physics code suite in the 80’s and 90’s. From 1994 to 1998 he worked with Nobel Prize Carlo Rubbia at the design of a novel accelerator-driven nuclear power device. From 1998 to 2013 he has been Computing Coordinator of the ALICE experiment at LHC. In 2013, he obtained a PhD in physics at the University of Nantes (France). From 2013 to 2017 he has been leading the development of the new generation of particle transport code. Federico is also a certified pet therapist, a group psychoanalyst, didactical psychoanalyst at the Société pour la Psychanalyse Multidisciplinaire and member of the Institute for Psychoanalysis Charles Baudouin in Geneva.