China’s Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing is pioneering innovative approaches in quantum computing and quantum machine learning to open up new research pathways within its particle physics programme, as Hideki Okawa, Weidong Li and Jun Cao explain The Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is the largest basic science laboratory in China. It hosts a multidisciplinary research programme spanning elementary particle physics, astrophysics as well as the planning, design and construction of large-scale accelerator projects – including the China Spallation Neutron Source, which launched in 2018, and the High Energy Photon Source, due to come online in 2025. While investment in IHEP’s experimental infrastructure has ramped dramatically over the past 20 years, the development and application of quantum machine-learning and quantum-computing technologies is now poised to yield similarly far-reaching outcomes within the IHEP res...