Quantum simulation of bottomonium dynamics in the quark–gluon plasma via the Lindblad equation

Abstract Quantum computing provides a powerful framework for simulating real-time dynamics in open quantum systems, offering key advantages for modeling heavy-quarkonium transport in high-energy nuclear collisions. In this work, we perform quantum simulations of the isotropic next-to-leading-order Lindblad equation for bottomonium in the quark-gluon plasma using a reduced spherical coordinate representation. We discretize operators and wavefunctions, map the physical state onto qubits, and execute time evolution via parameterized quantum gate operations. By extracting the Υ(1S) survival probability, we quantitatively isolate the color-octet contribution to the correlated regeneration of the bottomonium ground state, demonstrating that its overall impact is small in the final production of the bottomonium ground state Υ(1S) in the hot QCD medium at temperatures accessible at the Large Hadron Collider. Additionally, we have further optimized the quantum simulation algorithm for the Lindblad equation. The improved algorithm requires only a single ancillary qubit to realize the Lindblad evolution, thereby minimizing the circuit significantly.