From Hamiltonian QFT to Quantum Simulation
The 2026 IBS School on Quantum Computation for Quantum Field Theory is designed for students and researchers in high-energy theory, phenomenology, lattice field theory, nuclear theory, quantum information, and related areas who want to understand how quantum field theories can be reformulated as quantum-computational problems.
Why & How This School?
Many central questions in particle physics are dynamical questions about quantum fields: how states are prepared, how they evolve, how correlations and observables are extracted, and how theoretical predictions can be checked against controlled approximations or data. Standard perturbative and Euclidean methods have been enormously successful, but they also leave important regimes difficult to access directly, including real-time evolution, finite density, nonequilibrium dynamics, and strongly coupled systems.
Quantum computation offers a complementary way to think about these problems. Complementing the usual path-integral viewpoint, one reformulates the theory in Hamiltonian language, identifies the physical Hilbert space and its constraints, maps the degrees of freedom to qubits, and asks which observables can be simulated and trusted. The aim of this school is to introduce this full physics-to-computation pipeline from the viewpoint of QFT.
The school starts from physics questions familiar to the QFT community - real-time dynamics, finite-density systems, gauge constraints, strongly coupled regimes, and the extraction of physical observables - and follows the path from Hamiltonian formulations to qubit encodings, state preparation, time evolution, measurement, and validation.
Prior experience with quantum algorithms is helpful but not required. Preparatory materials on essential quantum-computation concepts and computational setup will be provided in advance, so that participants can begin the lectures and hands-on sessions from a common baseline.
At a Glance
- Dates: August 2 (Sun) – August 7 (Fri), 2026
- Venue: IBS Science Culture Center, Daejeon, Republic of Korea
- Format: Main lectures, tutorial sessions, and a colloquium day
- Timetable at a Glance
Lecturers & Colloquium Speakers
- Indrakshi Raychowdhury (BITS Pilani)
- Jesse Stryker (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
- Xiaoyang Wang (RIKEN-iTHEMS)
- Kihwan Kim (IBS Center for Trapped-Ion Quantum Science)
- Hyukjoon Kwon (KIAS)
- Jongchul Mun (KRISS)
- Daniel Kyungdeock Park (Yonsei University)
Program
Lectures: Three connected lecture blocks, together with tutorials and a colloquium day.
- Why quantum computation for QFT?
- How to simulate?
- How to trust the results?
Tutorial Sessions: Hands-on tutorials built around representative examples and accessible tools.
Colloquium Day: Broader talks connecting the school to the wider quantum information landscape.
Organized by
- Won Sang Cho (IBS CTPU-PTC)
- Dongwook Ghim (IBS CTPU-PTC)
- Seyong Kim (Sejong University)
- Jong-Wan Lee (IBS CTPU-PTC)
Hosted by
Particle Theory and Cosmology Group (PTC)
Center for Theoretical Physics of the Universe (CTPU)
Institute for Basic Science (IBS)
