Configuration interaction (CI) is among the most established approaches to nuclear structure calculations. Its extension to increasingly large configuration spaces is nevertheless limited by the combinatorial growth of the many-body Hilbert space and the computational cost of Hamiltonian diagonalization. Fault-tolerant quantum computing offers an alternative route to solving the nuclear many-body problem.

This postdoctoral project aims to develop and optimize a quantum algorithm for nuclear CI calculations based on Hamiltonian qubitization and quantum phase estimation. Particular emphasis will be placed on exploiting nuclear symmetries, factorizing nuclear interactions, and preparing correlated initial states. The algorithm will target effective Hamiltonians derived from ab initio approaches, including the effects of three-nucleon interactions.

The proposed developments will be benchmarked against established classical nuclear CI calculations before being extended to larger configuration spaces. Quantum resource estimates will account for logical qubits, non-Clifford gate counts, state-preparation costs, and quantum error correction. The central objective is to identify the computational regimes in which fault-tolerant quantum algorithms could provide a meaningful advantage over state-of-the-art classical nuclear many-body methods.