2021/02/28 by Francesco Turro, Alessandro Roggero, Valentina Amitrano +7 · 42 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Computer science #Imaginary time #Neural Networks and Reservoir Computing #Open quantum system #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum algorithm #Quantum computer #Quantum error correction #Quantum mechanics #Quantum network #Quantum simulator #Quantum state #Quantum technology #Theoretical computer science #nucl-th #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.105.022440
published in Physical Review A 105(2) (American Physical Society) · 12 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables
arxiv created 2021/11/12 · openalex publication_date 2022/02/28 · arxiv updated 2022/03/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Evolution in imaginary time is a prominent technique for finding the ground state of quantum many-body systems, and the heart of a number of numerical methods that have been used with great success in quantum chemistry, condensed matter and nuclear physics. We propose an algorithm to implement imaginary time propagation on a quantum computer. Our algorithm is devised in the context of an efficient encoding into an optimized gate, drawing on the underlying characteristics of the quantum device, of a unitary operation in an extended Hilbert space. However, we proved that for simple problems it can be successfully applied to standard digital quantum machines. This work paves the way for porting quantum many-body methods based on imaginary-time propagation to near-term quantum devices, enabling the future quantum simulation of the ground states of a broad class of microscopic systems.