  Simulating the real-time dynamics of lattice gauge theories, underlying the
Standard Model of particle physics, is a notoriously difficult problem where
quantum simulators can provide a practical advantage over classical approaches.
In this work, we present a complete Rydberg-based architecture, co-designed to
digitally simulate the dynamics of general gauge theories coupled to matter
fields in a hardware-efficient manner. Ref. [1] showed how a qudit processor,
where non-abelian gauge fields are locally encoded and time-evolved,
considerably reduces the required simulation resources compared to standard
qubit-based quantum computers. Here we integrate the latter with a recently
introduced fermionic quantum processor [2], where fermionic statistics are
accounted for at the hardware level, allowing us to construct quantum circuits
that preserve the locality of the gauge-matter interactions. We exemplify the
flexibility of such a fermion-qudit processor by focusing on two paradigmatic
high-energy phenomena. First, we present a resource-efficient protocol to
simulate the Abelian-Higgs model, where the dynamics of confinement and string
breaking can be investigated. Then, we show how to prepare hadrons made up of
fermionic matter constituents bound by non-abelian gauge fields, and show how
to extract the corresponding hadronic tensor. In both cases, we estimate the
required resources, showing how quantum devices can be used to calculate
experimentally-relevant quantities in particle physics.
