Neutrino Telescope Event Classification on Quantum Computers
AI Breakdown
Get a structured breakdown of this paper — what it's about, the core idea, and key takeaways for the field.
Abstract
Quantum computers represent a new computational paradigm with steadily improving hardware capabilities. In this article, we present the first study exploring how current quantum computers can be used to classify different neutrino event types observed in neutrino telescopes. We investigate two quantum machine learning approaches, Neural Projected Quantum Kernels (NPQKs) and Quantum Convolutional Neural Networks (QCNNs), and find that both achieve classification performance comparable to classical machine learning methods across a wide energy range. By introducing a moment-of-inertia-based encoding scheme and a novel preprocessing approach, we enable efficient and scalable learning with large neutrino astronomy datasets. Tested on both simulators and the IBM Strasbourg quantum processor, the NPQK achieves a testing accuracy near 80%, with robust results above 1 TeV and close agreement between simulation and hardware performance. A simulated QCNN achieves a ~70% accuracy over the same energy range. These results underscore the promise of quantum machine learning for neutrino astronomy, paving the way for future advances as quantum hardware matures.