Nuclear Physics Tortoise Lecture Series 2027           

- Seeing the landscape of quantum computing in nuclear physics, then building a first quantum simulation.

- Now in its third year (launched in 2025), the Nuclear Physics Tortoise Lecture Series follows a simple motto:

Slow and steady, from principles to practice!

This year’s theme explores quantum computing in nuclear physics, connecting the nuclear many-body problem with the principles and practical tools of quantum computation. Invited lecturer Matthias Heinz (RIKEN) will guide participants from qubits, quantum gates, and measurement to the representation of nuclear Hamiltonians on quantum computers. The lectures will introduce how fermionic degrees of freedom are mapped onto qubits, how quantum circuits prepare and evolve many-body states, and how algorithms such as the variational quantum eigensolver and quantum phase estimation approach nuclear structure problems. Throughout, the emphasis will remain on the physics: what we want to calculate, how we encode it, and how we assess the reliability of the results.

In the hands-on component, participants will develop a small quantum simulation of a simple nuclear model, step by step. Starting from a Hamiltonian in a finite model space, we will construct its qubit representation, design a trial-state circuit, evaluate energy expectation values, and implement a basic variational optimization using a classical quantum-circuit simulator. Comparisons with exact diagonalization will help participants understand approximation errors, while simple exercises will illustrate the effects of finite measurement statistics and device noise.

By the end of the school, participants will leave with (i) a working quantum-simulation workflow they understand step by step and (ii) a clear conceptual map linking nuclear many-body physics to quantum algorithms, their present limitations, and their future possibilities—the Tortoise School way: deliberate, precise, and durable.

Venue

Soongsil University

Period

January 17 (Sun.), 2027 ~ January 22 (Fri.), 2027

Organizer

Myung-Ki Cheoun (Soongsil Univ., Korea)

Youngman Kim (IBS, Korea)

Chang-Hwan Lee (Pusan Nat'l Univ.,  Korea)

Yeunhwan Lim (Yonsei Univ., Korea)

Seung-il Nam (Pukyoung Nat'l Univ., Korea)

Yongwoo Choi (Hoseo Univ., Korea)

Invited Lecturers

Matthias Heinz (Riken)

Contact Info.

teddy5009@yonsei.ac.kr (Song, Jihu)