Formulation of Maxwell Equations in a Magnetized Plasma Amenable to Quantum Computing

In order to take advantage of the highly anticipated speedup offered by quantum computers over the classical ones, it is necessary for a quantum reformulation of classical topics in plasma physics. We are particularly interested in studying the propagation and scattering of electromagnetic waves by density fluctuations in fusion plasmas. We construct a Schrödinger representation of Maxwell equations for wave propagation in plasmas that admits unitary evolution operator, and incorporates methods from passive media theory and pseudo-Hermitian quantum dynamics [1]. The formulation establishes novel insights into the treatment of linear, dispersive, wave propagation in inhomogeneous plasmas, and the development of quantum lattice algorithms. We will present our theoretical model and discuss the symmetries associated with the generator for wave propagation, and the approach for implementing the model on a quantum computer with optimal error scaling.

[1] A. Mostafazadeh, Int. J. Geom. Methods Mod. Phys 7, 7 (2010)