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arXiv:1309.0876 · Physical Review Letters

Hamiltonian Learning and Certification Using Quantum Resources

Nathan Wiebe, Christopher Granade, Christopher Ferrie, David G. Cory

Published May 14, 2014• 219 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In recent years quantum simulation has made great strides, culminating in experiments that existing supercomputers cannot easily simulate. Although this raises the possibility that special purpose analog quantum simulators may be able to perform computational tasks that existing computers cannot, it also introduces a major challenge: certifying that the quantum simulator is in fact simulating the correct quantum dynamics. We provide an algorithm that, under relatively weak assumptions, can be used to efficiently infer the Hamiltonian of a large but untrusted quantum simulator using a trusted quantum simulator. We illustrate the power of this approach by showing numerically that it can inexpensively learn the Hamiltonians for large frustrated Ising models, demonstrating that quantum resources can make certifying analog quantum simulators tractable.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.112.190501

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In recent years quantum simulation has made great strides, culminating in experiments that existing supercomputers cannot easily simulate. Although this raises the possibility that special purpose analog quantum simulators may be able to perform computational tasks that existing computers cannot, it also introduces a major challenge: certifying that the quantum simulator is in fact simulating the correct quantum dynamics. We provide an algorithm that, under relatively weak assumptions, can be used to efficiently infer the Hamiltonian of a large but untrusted quantum simulator using a trusted quantum simulator. We illustrate the power of this approach by showing numerically that it can inexpensively learn the Hamiltonians for large frustrated Ising models, demonstrating that quantum resources can make certifying analog quantum simulators tractable.
Identifying an accurate model for the dynamics of a quantum system is a vexing problem that underlies a range of problems in experimental physics and quantum information theory. Recently, a method called quantum Hamiltonian learning has been proposed by the present authors that uses quantum simulation as a resource for modeling an unknown quantum system. This approach can, under certain circumstances, allow such models to be efficiently identified. A major caveat of that work is the assumption of that all elements of the protocol are noise free. Here we show that quantum Hamiltonian learning can tolerate substantial amounts of depolarizing noise and show numerical evidence that it can tolerate noise drawn from other realistic models. We further provide evidence that the learning algorithm will find a model that is maximally close to the true model in cases where the hypothetical model lacks terms present in the true model. Finally, we also provide numerical evidence that the algorithm works for noncommuting models. This work illustrates that quantum Hamiltonian learning can be performed using realistic resources and suggests that even imperfect quantum resources may be valuable for characterizing quantum systems.
Abstract One of the main challenges in the field of quantum simulation and computation is to identify ways to certify the correct functioning of a device when a classical efficient simulation is not available. Important cases are situations in which one cannot classically calculate local expectation values of state preparations efficiently. In this work, we develop weak-membership formulations of the certification of ground state preparations. We provide a non-interactive protocol for certifying ground states of frustration-free Hamiltonians based on simple energy measurements of local Hamiltonian terms. This certification protocol can be applied to classically intractable analog quantum simulations: For example, using Feynman-Kitaev Hamiltonians, one can encode universal quantum computation in such ground states. Moreover, our certification protocol is applicable to ground state encodings of IQP circuits aiming at the demonstration of quantum supremacy. These can be certified efficiently when the error is polynomially bounded.
Analog Quantum Simulators offer a route to exploring strongly correlated many-body dynamics beyond classical computation, but their predictive power remains limited by the absence of quantitative error estimation. Establishing rigorous uncertainty bounds is essential for elevating such devices from qualitative demonstrations to quantitative scientific tools. Here we introduce a general framework for bounded-error quantum simulation, which provides predictions for many-body observables with experimentally quantifiable uncertainties. The approach combines Hamiltonian and Lindbladian Learning--a statistically rigorous inference of the coherent and dissipative generators governing the dynamics--with the propagation of their uncertainties into the simulated observables, yielding confidence bounds directly derived from experimental data. We demonstrate this framework on trapped-ion quantum simulators implementing long-range Ising interactions with up to 51 ions, and validate it where classical comparison is possible. We analyze error bounds on two levels. First, we learn an open-system model from experimental data collected in an initial time window of quench dynamics, simulate the corresponding master equation, and quantitatively verify consistency between theoretical predictions and measured dynamics at long times. Second, we establish error bounds directly from experimental measurements alone, without relying on classical simulation--crucial for entering regimes of quantum advantage. The learned models reproduce the experimental evolution within the predicted bounds, demonstrating quantitative reliability and internal consistency. Bounded-error quantum simulation provides a scalable foundation for trusted analog quantum computation, bridging the gap between experimental platforms and predictive many-body physics. The techniques presented here directly extend to digital quantum simulation.
We consider the problem of learning the Hamiltonian of a quantum system from estimates of Gibbs-state expectation values. Various methods for achieving this task were proposed recently, both from a practical and theoretical point of view. On the one hand, some practical algorithms have been implemented and used to analyze experimental data but these algorithms often lack correctness guarantees or fail to scale to large systems. On the other hand, theoretical algorithms with provable asymptotic efficiency guarantees have been proposed, but they seem challenging to implement. Recently, a semidefinite family of Hamiltonian learning algorithms was proposed which was numerically demonstrated to scale well into the 100-qubit regime, but provided no provable accuracy guarantees. We build on this work in two ways, by extending it to provide certified a posteriori lower and upper bounds on the parameters to be learned, and by proving a priori convergence in the special case where the Hamiltonian is commuting.
A major problem facing the development of quantum computers or large scale quantum simulators is that general methods for characterizing and controlling are intractable. We provide a new approach to this problem that uses small quantum simulators to efficiently characterize and learn control models for larger devices. Our protocol achieves this by using Bayesian inference in concert with Lieb–Robinson bounds and interactive quantum learning methods to achieve compressed simulations for characterization. We also show that the Lieb–Robinson velocity is epistemic for our protocol, meaning that information propagates at a rate that depends on the uncertainty in the system Hamiltonian. We illustrate the efficiency of our bootstrapping protocol by showing numerically that an 8 qubit Ising model simulator can be used to calibrate and control a 50 qubit Ising simulator while using only about 750 kilobits of experimental data. Finally, we provide upper bounds for the Fisher information that show that the number of experiments needed to characterize a system rapidly diverges as the duration of the experiments used in the characterization shrinks, which motivates the use of methods such as ours that do not require short evolution times.
Learning the Hamiltonian of a many-body system from its dynamics is a central task in quantum science, yet the algorithms with the strongest provable guarantees assume some level of quantum control--fast, arbitrary single-qubit gates interleaved with time evolution, and measurements in arbitrary bases--that is beyond the capabilities of near-term analog quantum simulators. Motivated by analog atom- and ion-based platforms, we study Hamiltonian learning under minimal access models. Uniform state preparation and measurements: We first consider the setting where in every experiment, one can rotate each qubit to the same state, perform short-time evolution, and measure every qubit in the same basis. Surprisingly, we show that for generic 2-local Hamiltonians on any interaction graph, all of the parameters can be reconstructed from such experiments. Computational basis state preparation and measurements: We then consider a similarly constrained setting, but where state preparation and measurement are restricted to the computational basis. For nearest-neighbor Hamiltonians with only Pauli X/ZX/ZX/Z interactions, a class which captures contemporary Rydberg atom platforms, we show that over 1D and 2D rectangular lattices, all of the parameters can be reconstructed from such experiments up to unavoidable gauges. Our protocols introduce new techniques for solving structured polynomial systems over an extensive number of parameters. Taken together, our results suggest that one can learn a great deal from the dynamics of quantum many-body systems even under the most stringent experimental constraints.