An approach for calculating astrophysical opacities on quantum computers

We propose a quantum algorithmic protocol for calculating astrophysical opacities by time evolving the Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian, containing both first principles electronic and photonic degrees of freedom. Our approach relies on discretization and simulation of interacting atomic and photonic subsystems. By inferring the opacity from frequency-resolved measurements of the latter, we can efficiently resolve spectral features. We consider the impact of Trotter and finite thermal sampling errors in developing resource estimates for the classically challenging problem of the opacity of solar iron.