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arXiv:0812.0562 · Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Higher order decompositions of ordered operator exponentials

Nathan Wiebe, Dominic William Berry, Peter Høyer, Barry C. Sanders

Published Jan 12, 2010• 208 citations
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Abstract

We present a decomposition scheme based on Lie–Trotter–Suzuki product formulae to approximate an ordered operator exponential with a product of ordinary operator exponentials. We show, using a counterexample, that Lie–Trotter–Suzuki approximations may be of a lower order than expected when applied to problems that have singularities or discontinuous derivatives of appropriate order. To address this problem, we present a set of criteria that is sufficient for the validity of these approximations, prove convergence and provide upper bounds on the approximation error. This work may shed light on why related product formulae fail to be as accurate as expected when applied to Coulomb potentials.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8113/43/6/065203

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The Lie-Trotter formula has been a fundamental tool in quantum mechanics, quantum computing, and quantum simulations. The error estimations for the Lie-Trotter product formula play a crucial role in achieving scalability and computational efficiency. In this note, we present two error estimates of Lie-Trotter product formulas, utilizing Jordan product within Banach algebras. Additionally, we introduce two generalized Lie-Trotter formula and provide two explicit estimation formulas. Consequently, the renowned Suzuki symmetrized approximation for the exponentiated sums follows directly from our main Theorem.
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Suzuki-Trotter decompositions of exponential operators like exp⁡(Ht)\exp(Ht)exp(Ht) are required in almost every branch of numerical physics. Often the exponent under consideration has to be split into more than two operators, for instance as local gates on quantum computers. In this work, we demonstrate how highly optimised schemes originally derived for exactly two operators can be applied to such generic Suzuki-Trotter decompositions. After this first trick, we explain what makes an efficient decomposition and how to choose from the large variety available. Furthermore we demonstrate that many problems for which a Suzuki-Trotter decomposition might appear to be the canonical ansatz, are better approached with different methods like Taylor or Chebyshev expansions. In particular, we derive an efficient and numerically stable method to implement truncated polynomial expansions based on a linear factorisation using their complex zeros.
Accurately simulating long-time dynamics of many-body systems is a challenge in both classical and quantum computing due to the accumulation of Trotter errors. While low-order Trotter-Suzuki decompositions are straightforward to implement, their rapidly growing error limits access to long-time observables. We present a framework for constructing efficient high-order Trotter-Suzuki schemes by identifying their structure and directly optimizing their parameters over a high-dimensional space. This method enables the discovery of new schemes with significantly improved efficiency compared to traditional constructions, such as those by Suzuki and Yoshida. Based on the theoretical efficiency and practical performance, we recommend two novel highly efficient schemes at 4th4^{\textrm{th}}4th and 6th6^{\textrm{th}}6th order. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of these decompositions on the Heisenberg model and the quantum harmonic oscillator, and find that for a fixed final time they perform better across the computational cost. Even when using large time steps, they surpass established low-order schemes like the Leapfrog. Finally, we investigate the in-practice performance of different Trotter schemes and find the decompositions with more uniform coefficients tend to feature improved error accumulation over long times. We have included this observation into our choice of recommended schemes.