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arXiv · 2510.18869

Quantum Computing Hadron Fragmentation Functions in Light-Front Chromodynamics

Abstract

We deploy Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) in Light-front Quantization (and Gauge), discretized and truncated in both Fock -- and momentum -- spaces with a particle-register encoding suited for quantum simulation; we show for the first time how to calculate fragmentation functions, a problem heretofore untractable in general from \emph{ab-initio} approaches. We provide a classical-simulator based proof-of-concept by computing the charm-to-charmonium fragmentation, $c\to J/\psi$, in a simplified setup, an interesting case where we can (reasonably) compare with the known 1993 perturbative evaluation within Nonrelativistic QCD.

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Juan José Gálvez-Viruet, Felipe J. Llanes-Estrada, Nicolás Martínez de Arenaza, María Gómez-Rocha, Timothy J. Hobbs. 2025-10-21. Quantum Computing Hadron Fragmentation Functions in Light-Front Chromodynamics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.18869

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