Generating tensor-network states via combination of phonons and qubits in a trapped-ion platform

Abstract

Tensor-network (TN) states supply one of the most powerful variational tools to simulate quantum many-body systems. Though classical simulation of TN states (with approximation) is efficient, the required computational (classical) resources are still beyond our current capability when the size of the system and bond dimension becomes large (which is necessary for studying complicated quantum many-body systems). The TN contraction, which is the dominant cost in TN algorithms, can be replaced by measuring the corresponding physical observables directly in the experimentally prepared TN states. The computational cost is thus dramatically reduced. Here, we propose a scheme to generate TN states by combining multiple phonon modes and qubits in the ion trap platform. With the full connectivity and parallelism of the phonon modes operation, we can generate TN states with rough but complex entanglement structures [such as the multiscale entanglement renormalization Ansatz on the one-dimensional (1D) lattice and the projected entangled pair states on the kagome lattice] by shallow generation circuits. With the abundant local free parameters of the qubits operation, we can refine the local details of the generated TN states. We further benchmark the expressive power of the generated TN states by optimizing the ground energy, which is very close to the exact results of the 1D transverse-field Ising model near the critical point and the 1D Heisenberg model. Our method supplies a quantum-classical hybrid way to simulate the ground states of many-body systems and paves a promising way to demonstrate the advantage of quantum simulation.