AI and the World's Hard Problems · Physics · arXiv · 2026-10-19
A comparative study of variational quantum classifiers and classical machine learning for $tW-t\bar{t}$ discrimination at the LHC
Measuring single top-quark production in the tW channel requires separating it from the dominant tt̄ background. This study applies a Variational Quantum Classifier to simulated CMS Open Data collision events and compares it with boosted decision trees and a multilayer perceptron. It identifies the analysis regimes where the quantum-inspired model is competitive with the classical methods.