The Long Road towards Quantum Simulations of the Standard Model

The Standard Model of Particle Physics, encapsulating the vast majority of our understanding of the fundamental nature of our Universe, is at its core a gauge theory. Much of the richness of its phenomenology can be traced back to the complicated interplay of its various gauged interactions. While massive theoretical and algorithmic developments in classical computing have allowed us to probe many of these aspects, there remain a plethora of open questions that do not seem amenable to these methods. With a fundamentally different computational strategy, quantum computers hold the potential to address these open questions. However, a long road lies ahead of us before this potential may be realized. In this talk, I will first give a casual introduction to quantum computing, including the current scope of real-world hardware. I will then proceed to discuss a key step on the journey towards quantum simulating the Standard Model: constructing lattice gauge Hamiltonians that can be efficiently simulated on digital quantum devices. Of particular focus will be how Hamiltonian formulations, Gauss law constraints and continuous gauge groups make this a highly non-trivial task.