Ground States Of Local Hamiltonians Research Articles

Absence of Barren Plateaus in Finite Local-Depth Circuits with Long-Range Entanglement.

Ground state preparation is classically intractable for general Hamiltonians. On quantum devices, shallow parametrized circuits can be effectively trained to obtain short-range entangled states under the paradigm of variational quantum eigensolver, while deep circuits are generally untrainable due to the barren plateau phenomenon. In this Letter, we give a general lower bound on the variance of circuit gradients for arbitrary quantum circuits composed of local 2-designs. Based on our unified framework, we prove the absence of barren plateaus in training finite local-depth circuits (FLDC) for the ground states of local Hamiltonians. FLDCs are allowed to be deep in the conventional circuit depth to generate long-range entangled ground states, such as topologically ordered states, but their local depths are finite, i.e., there is only a finite number of gates acting on individual qubits. This characteristic sets FLDC apart from shallow circuits: FLDC in general cannot be classically simulated to estimate local observables efficiently by existing tensor network methods in two and higher dimensions. We validate our analytical results with extensive numerical simulations and demonstrate the effectiveness of variational training using the generalized toric code model.

Efficient Verification of Ground States of Frustration-Free Hamiltonians

Ground states of local Hamiltonians are of key interest in many-body physics and also in quantum information processing. Efficient verification of these states are crucial to many applications, but very challenging. Here we propose a simple, but powerful recipe for verifying the ground states of general frustration-free Hamiltonians based on local measurements. Moreover, we derive rigorous bounds on the sample complexity by virtue of the quantum detectability lemma (with improvement) and quantum union bound. Notably, the number of samples required does not increase with the system size when the underlying Hamiltonian is local and gapped, which is the case of most interest. As an application, we propose a general approach for verifying Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki (AKLT) states on arbitrary graphs based on local spin measurements, which requires only a constant number of samples for AKLT states defined on various lattices. Our work is of interest not only to many tasks in quantum information processing, but also to the study of many-body physics.

How to Simulate Quantum Measurement without Computing Marginals

We describe and analyze algorithms for classically simulating measurement of an n-qubit quantum state in the standard basis, that is, sampling a bit string from the probability distribution determined by the Born rule. Our algorithms reduce the sampling task to computing poly(n) amplitudes of n-qubit states; unlike previously known techniques they do not require computation of marginal probabilities. Two classes of quantum states are considered: output states of polynomial-size quantum circuits, and ground states of local Hamiltonians with an inverse polynomial spectral gap. We show that our algorithms can significantly accelerate quantum circuit simulations based on tensor network contraction or low-rank stabilizer decompositions. As another striking consequence we obtain the first efficient classical simulation algorithm for measurement-based quantum computation with the surface code resource state on any planar graph and any schedule of measurements.

Optimization at the boundary of the tensor network variety

Tensor network states form a variational ansatz class widely used, both analytically and numerically, in the study of quantum many-body systems. It is known that if the underlying graph contains a cycle, e.g. as in projected entangled pair states (PEPS), then the set of tensor network states of given bond dimension is not closed. Its closure is the tensor network variety. Recent work has shown that states on the boundary of this variety can yield more efficient representations for states of physical interest, but it remained unclear how to systematically find and optimize over such representations. We address this issue by defining a new ansatz class of states that includes states at the boundary of the tensor network variety of given bond dimension. We show how to optimize over this class in order to find ground states of local Hamiltonians by only slightly modifying standard algorithms and code for tensor networks. We apply this new method to a different of models and observe favorable energies and runtimes when compared with standard tensor network methods.

Scaling of variational quantum circuit depth for condensed matter systems

We benchmark the accuracy of a variational quantum eigensolver based on a finite-depth quantum circuit encoding ground state of local Hamiltonians. We show that in gapped phases, the accuracy improves exponentially with the depth of the circuit. When trying to encode the ground state of conformally invariant Hamiltonians, we observe two regimes. A finite-depth regime, where the accuracy improves slowly with the number of layers, and a finite-size regime where it improves again exponentially. The cross-over between the two regimes happens at a critical number of layers whose value increases linearly with the size of the system. We discuss the implication of these observations in the context of comparing different variational ansatz and their effectiveness in describing critical ground states.

Erratum: Quantum simulation of long-range XY quantum spin glass with strong area-law violation using trapped ions [Phys. Rev. A 99 , 052342 (2019)

Ground states of local Hamiltonians are known to obey the entanglement entropy area law. While area law violation of a mild kind (logarithmic) is commonly encountered, strong area-law violation (more than logarithmic) is rare. In this paper, we study the long range quantum spin glass in one dimension whose couplings are disordered and fall off with distance as a power-law. We show that this system exhibits more than logarithmic area law violation in its ground state. Strikingly this feature is found to be true even in the short range regime in sharp contrast to the spinless long range disordered fermionic model. This necessitates the study of large systems for the quantum $XY$ spin glass model which is challenging since these numerical methods depend on the validity of the area law. This situation lends itself naturally for the exploration of a quantum simulation approach. We present a proof-of-principle implementation of this non-trivially interacting spin model using trapped ions and provide a detailed study of experimentally realistic parameters.

The complexity of simulating local measurements on quantum systems

An important task in quantum physics is the estimation of local quantities for ground states of local Hamiltonians. Recently, [Ambainis, CCC 2014] defined the complexity classPQMA[log], and motivated its study by showing that the physical task of estimating the expectation value of a local observable against the ground state of a local Hamiltonian isPQMA[log]-complete. In this paper, we continue the study ofPQMA[log], obtaining the following lower and upper bounds.Lower bounds (hardness results): - ThePQMA[log]-completeness result of [Ambainis, CCC 2014] requiresO(log⁡n)-local observables and Hamiltonians. We show that simulating even asingle qubitmeasurement on ground states of5-local Hamiltonians isPQMA[log]-complete, resolving an open question of Ambainis.- We formalize the complexity theoretic study of estimating two-point correlation functions against ground states, and show that this task is similarlyPQMA[log]-complete. - We identify a flaw in [Ambainis, CCC 2014] regarding aPUQMA[log]-hardness proof for estimating spectral gaps of local Hamiltonians. By introducing a ``query validation'' technique, we build on [Ambainis, CCC 2014] to obtainPUQMA[log]-hardness for estimating spectral gaps under polynomial-time Turing reductions. Upper bounds (containment in complexity classes): -PQMA[log]is thought of as ``slightly harder'' than QMA. We justify this formally by exploiting the hierarchical voting technique of [Beigel, Hemachandra, Wechsung, SCT 1989] to showPQMA[log]⊆PP. This improves the containmentQMA⊆PP[Kitaev, Watrous, STOC 2000]. This work contributes a rigorous treatment of the subtlety involved in studying oracle classes in which the oracle solves apromiseproblem. This is particularly relevant for quantum complexity theory, where most natural classes such as BQP and QMA are defined as promise classes.

Quantum simulation of long-range XY quantum spin glass with strong area-law violation using trapped ions

Ground states of local Hamiltonians are known to obey the entanglement entropy area law. While area-law violation of a mild kind (logarithmic) is commonly encountered, strong area-law violation (more than logarithmic) is rare. In this paper, we study the long-range quantum spin glass in one dimension whose couplings are disordered and fall off with distance as a power law. We show that this system exhibits more than logarithmic area-law violation in its ground state. Strikingly this feature is found to be true even in the short-range regime, in sharp contrast to the spinless long-range disordered fermionic model. This necessitates the study of large systems for the quantum $XY$ spin glass model, which is challenging since these numerical methods depend on the validity of the area law. This situation lends itself naturally to the exploration of a quantum simulation approach. We present a proof-of-principle implementation of this nontrivially interacting spin model using trapped ions and provide a detailed study of experimentally realistic parameters.

Single-copy entanglement detection

One of the main challenges of quantum information is the reliable verification of quantum entanglement. The conventional detection schemes require repeated measurement on a large number of identically prepared systems. This is hard to achieve in practice when dealing with large-scale entangled quantum systems. In this letter we formulate verification as a decision procedure, i.e., entanglement is seen as the ability of quantum system to answer certain “yes-no questions”. We show that for a variety of large quantum states even a single copy suffices to detect entanglement with a high probability by using local measurements. For example, a single copy of a 16-qubit k-producible state or one copy of 24-qubit linear cluster state suffices to verify entanglement with more than 95% confidence. Our method is applicable to many important classes of states, such as cluster states or ground states of local Hamiltonians in general.

Approximating local observables on projected entangled pair states

Tensor network states are for good reasons believed to capture ground states of gapped local Hamiltonians arising in the condensed matter context, states which are in turn expected to satisfy an entanglement area law. However, the computational hardness of contracting projected entangled pair states in two and higher dimensional systems is often seen as a significant obstacle when devising higher-dimensional variants of the density-matrix renormalisation group method. In this work, we show that for those projected entangled pair states that are expected to provide good approximations of such ground states of local Hamiltonians, one can compute local expectation values in quasi-polynomial time. We therefore provide a complexity-theoretic justification of why state-of-the-art numerical tools work so well in practice. We comment on how the transfer operators of such projected entangled pair states have a gap and discuss notions of local topological quantum order. We finally turn to the computation of local expectation values on quantum computers, providing a meaningful application for a small-scale quantum computer.

How local is the information in tensor networks of matrix product states or projected entangled pairs states

Two dimensional tensor networks such as projected entangled pairs states (PEPS) are generally hard to contract. This is arguably the main reason why variational tensor network methods in 2D are still not as successful as in 1D. However, this is not necessarily the case if the tensor network represents a gapped ground state of a local Hamiltonian; such states are subject to many constraints and contain much more structure. In this paper we introduce a new approach for approximating the expectation value of a local observable in ground states of local Hamiltonians that are represented as PEPS tensor-networks. Instead of contracting the full tensor-network, we try to estimate the expectation value using only a local patch of the tensor-network around the observable. Surprisingly, we demonstrate that this is often easier to do when the system is frustrated. In such case, the spanning vectors of the local patch are subject to non-trivial constraints that can be utilized via a semi-definite program to calculate rigorous lower- and upper-bounds on the expectation value. We test our approach in 1D systems, where we show how the expectation value can be calculated up to at least 3 or 4 digits of precision, even when the patch radius is smaller than the correlation length.

Cluster expansion for ground states of local Hamiltonians

A central problem in many-body quantum physics is the determination of the ground state of a thermodynamically large physical system. We construct a cluster expansion for ground states of local Hamiltonians, which naturally incorporates physical requirements inherited by locality as conditions on its cluster amplitudes. Applying a diagrammatic technique we derive the relation of these amplitudes to thermodynamic quantities and local observables. Moreover we derive a set of functional equations that determine the cluster amplitudes for a general Hamiltonian, verify the consistency with perturbation theory and discuss non-perturbative approaches. Lastly we verify the persistence of locality features of the cluster expansion under unitary evolution with a local Hamiltonian and provide applications to out-of-equilibrium problems: a simplified proof of equilibration to the GGE and a cumulant expansion for the statistics of work, for an interacting-to-free quantum quench.

Obtaining Highly Excited Eigenstates of Many-Body Localized Hamiltonians by the Density Matrix Renormalization Group Approach.

The eigenstates of many-body localized (MBL) Hamiltonians exhibit low entanglement. We adapt the highly successful density-matrix renormalization group method, which is usually used to find modestly entangled ground states of local Hamiltonians, to find individual highly excited eigenstates of MBL Hamiltonians. The adaptation builds on the distinctive spatial structure of such eigenstates. We benchmark our method against the well-studied random field Heisenberg model in one dimension. At moderate to large disorder, the method successfully obtains excited eigenstates with high accuracy, thereby enabling a study of MBL systems at much larger system sizes than those accessible to exact-diagonalization methods.

Reconstructing quantum states from local data.

We consider the problem of reconstructing global quantum states from local data. Because the reconstruction problem has many solutions in general, we consider the reconstructed state of maximum global entropy consistent with the local data. We show that unique ground states of local Hamiltonians are exactly reconstructed as the maximal entropy state. More generally, we show that if the state in question is a ground state of a local Hamiltonian with a degenerate space of locally indistinguishable ground states, then the maximal entropy state is close to the ground state projector. We also show that local reconstruction is possible for thermal states of local Hamiltonians. Finally, we discuss a procedure to certify that the reconstructed state is close to the true global state. We call the entropy of our reconstructed maximum entropy state the "reconstruction entropy," and we discuss its relation to emergent geometry in the context of holographic duality.

Graph states as ground states of two-body frustration-free Hamiltonians

The framework of measurement-based quantum computation (MBQC) allows us to view the ground states of local Hamiltonians as potential resources for universal quantum computation. A central goal in this field is to find models with ground states that are universal for MBQC and that are also natural in the sense that they involve only two-body interactions and have a small local Hilbert space dimension. Graph states are the original resource states for MBQC, and while it is not possible to obtain graph states as exact ground states of two-body Hamiltonians, here we construct two-body frustration-free Hamiltonians that have arbitrarily good approximations of graph states as unique ground states. The construction involves taking a two-body frustration-free model that has a ground state convertible to a graph state with stochastic local operations, then deforming the model such that its ground state is close to a graph state. Each graph state qubit resides in a subspace of a higher dimensional particle. This deformation can be applied to two-body frustration-free Affleck–Kennedy–Lieb–Tasaki (AKLT) models, yielding Hamiltonians that are exactly solvable with exact tensor network expressions for ground states. For the star-lattice AKLT model, the ground state of which is not expected to be a universal resource for MBQC, applying such a deformation appears to enhance the computational power of the ground state, promoting it to a universal resource for MBQC. Transitions in computational power, similar to percolation phase transitions, can be observed when Hamiltonians are deformed in this way. Improving the fidelity of the ground state comes at the cost of a shrinking gap. While analytically proving gap properties for these types of models is difficult in general, we provide a detailed analysis of the deformation of a spin-1 AKLT state to a linear graph state.

Tensor Network States and Geometry

Tensor network states are used to approximate ground states of local Hamiltonians on a lattice in D spatial dimensions. Different types of tensor network states can be seen to generate different geometries. Matrix product states (MPS) in D=1 dimensions, as well as projected entangled pair states (PEPS) in D>1 dimensions, reproduce the D-dimensional physical geometry of the lattice model; in contrast, the multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA) generates a (D+1)-dimensional holographic geometry. Here we focus on homogeneous tensor networks, where all the tensors in the network are copies of the same tensor, and argue that certain structural properties of the resulting many-body states are preconditioned by the geometry of the tensor network and are therefore largely independent of the choice of variational parameters. Indeed, the asymptotic decay of correlations in homogeneous MPS and MERA for D=1 systems is seen to be determined by the structure of geodesics in the physical and holographic geometries, respectively; whereas the asymptotic scaling of entanglement entropy is seen to always obey a simple boundary law—that is, again in the relevant geometry. This geometrical interpretation offers a simple and unifying framework to understand the structural properties of, and helps clarify the relation between, different tensor network states. In addition, it has recently motivated the branching MERA, a generalization of the MERA capable of reproducing violations of the entropic boundary law in D>1 dimensions.

PEPS as ground states: Degeneracy and topology

We introduce a framework for characterizing Matrix Product States (MPS) and Projected Entangled Pair States (PEPS) in terms of symmetries. This allows us to understand how PEPS appear as ground states of local Hamiltonians with finitely degenerate ground states and to characterize the ground state subspace. Subsequently, we apply our framework to show how the topological properties of these ground states can be explained solely from the symmetry: We prove that ground states are locally indistinguishable and can be transformed into each other by acting on a restricted region, we explain the origin of the topological entropy, and we discuss how to renormalize these states based on their symmetries. Finally, we show how the anyonic character of excitations can be understood as a consequence of the underlying symmetries.

Scaling of entanglement entropy at 2D quantum Lifshitz fixed points and topological fluids

The entanglement entropy of a pure quantum state of a bipartite system is defined as the von Neumann entropy of the reduced density matrix obtained by tracing over one of the two parts. Critical ground states of local Hamiltonians in one dimension have an entanglement entropy that diverges logarithmically in the subsystem size, with a universal coefficient that is is related to the central charge of the associated conformal field theory. Here I will discuss recent extensions of these ideas to a class of quantum critical points with dynamic critical exponent z = 2 in two space dimensions and to 2D systems in a topological phase. The application of these ideas to quantum dimer models and fractional quantum Hall states will be discussed.

Fermionic multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz

In a recent contribution [P. Corboz, G. Evenbly, F. Verstraete, and G. Vidal, arXiv:0904.4151 (unpublished)] entanglement renormalization was generalized to fermionic lattice systems in two spatial dimensions. Entanglement renormalization is a real-space coarse-graining transformation for lattice systems that produces a variational ansatz, the multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA), for the ground states of local Hamiltonians. In this paper we describe in detail the fermionic version of the MERA formalism and algorithm. Starting from the bosonic MERA, which can be regarded both as a quantum circuit or in relation to a coarse-graining transformation, we indicate how the scheme needs to be modified to simulate fermions. To confirm the validity of the approach, we present benchmark results for free and interacting fermions on a square lattice with sizes between $6\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}6$ and $162\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}162$ and with periodic boundary conditions. The present formulation of the approach applies to generic tensor network algorithms.

Peps as unique ground states of local hamiltonians

In this paper we consider projected entangled pair states (PEPS) on arbitrary lattices. We construct local parent Hamiltonians for each PEPS and isolate a condition under which the state is the unique ground state of the Hamiltonian. This condition, verified by generic PEPS and examples like the AKLT model, is an injective relation between the boundary and the bulk of any local region. While it implies the existence of an energy gap in the 1D case we will show that in certain cases (e.g., on a 2D hexagonal lattice) the parent Hamiltonian can be gapless with a critical ground state. To show this we invoke a mapping between classical and quantum models and prove that in these cases the injectivity relation between boundary and bulk solely depends on the lattice geometry.