Quantum-annealing-inspired algorithms for multijet clustering

Jet clustering or reconstruction is a crucial component at high energy colliders, a procedure to identify sprays of collimated particles originating from the fragmentation and hadronization of quarks and gluons. It is a complicated combinatorial optimization problem and requires intensive computing resources. In this study, we formulate jet reconstruction as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem and introduce novel quantum-annealing-inspired algorithms for clustering multiple jets in electron-positron collision events. One of these quantum-annealing-inspired algorithms, ballistic simulated bifurcation, overcomes problems previously observed in multijet clustering with quantum-annealing approaches. We find that both the distance defined in the QUBO matrix and the prediction power of the QUBO solvers have crucial impacts on the multijet clustering performance. This study opens up a new approach to globally reconstructing multijet beyond dijet in one go, in contrast to the traditional iterative method.