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arXiv:1611.08571 · Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science

On Preparing Ground States of Gapped Hamiltonians: An Efficient Quantum Lovász Local Lemma

András Gilyén, Or Sattath

Published Oct 1, 2017• 12 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A frustration-free local Hamiltonian has the property that its ground state minimises the energy of all local terms simultaneously. In general, even deciding whether a Hamiltonian is frustration-free is a hard task, as it is closely related to the QMA1-complete quantum satisfiability problem (QSAT) - the quantum analogue of SAT, which is the archetypal NP-complete problem in classical computer science. This connection shows that the frustration-free property is not only relevant to physics but also to computer science. The Quantum Lovasz Local Lemma (QLLL) provides a sufficient condition for frustration-freeness. Is there an efficient way to prepare a frustration-free state under the conditions of the QLLL? Previous results showed that the answer is positive if all local terms commute. These works were based on Moser's “compression argument” which was the original analysis technique of the celebrated resampling algorithm. We generalise and simplify the “compression argument”, so that it provides a simplified version of the previous quantum results, and improves on some classical results as well. More importantly, we improve on the previous constructive results by designing an algorithm that works efficiently for non-commuting terms as well, assuming that the system is “uniformly” gapped, by which we mean that the system and all its subsystems have an inverse polynomial energy gap. Similarly to the previous results, our algorithm has the charming feature that it uses only local measurement operations corresponding to the local Hamiltonian terms.

DOI
10.1109/focs.2017.47

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The Quantum Satisfiability problem generalizes the Boolean satisfiability problem to the quantum setting by replacing classical clauses with local projectors. The Quantum Lov\'asz Local Lemma gives a sufficient condition for a Quantum Satisfiability problem to be satisfiable~\cite{ambainis2012quantum}, by generalizing the classical Lov\'asz Local Lemma. The next natural question that arises is: can a satisfying quantum state be \emph{efficiently} found, when these conditions hold? In this work we present such an algorithm, with the additional requirement that all the projectors commute. The proof follows the information theoretic proof given by Moser's breakthrough result in the classical setting~\cite{moser2009constructiveSTOC}. Similar results were independently published in~\cite{cubitt2011constructive, cubitt2013quantum}.

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A frustration-free local Hamiltonian has the property that its ground state minimises the energy of all local terms simultaneously. In general, even deciding whether a Hamiltonian is frustration-free is a hard task, as it is closely related to the QMA1-complete quantum satisfiability problem (QSAT) - the quantum analogue of SAT, which is the archetypal NP-complete problem in classical computer science. This connection shows that the frustration-free property is not only relevant to physics but also to computer science. The Quantum Lovasz Local Lemma (QLLL) provides a sufficient condition for frustration-freeness. Is there an efficient way to prepare a frustration-free state under the conditions of the QLLL? Previous results showed that the answer is positive if all local terms commute. These works were based on Moser's “compression argument” which was the original analysis technique of the celebrated resampling algorithm. We generalise and simplify the “compression argument”, so that it provides a simplified version of the previous quantum results, and improves on some classical results as well. More importantly, we improve on the previous constructive results by designing an algorithm that works efficiently for non-commuting terms as well, assuming that the system is “uniformly” gapped, by which we mean that the system and all its subsystems have an inverse polynomial energy gap. Similarly to the previous results, our algorithm has the charming feature that it uses only local measurement operations corresponding to the local Hamiltonian terms.
The Quantum Lovász Local Lemma (QLLL) [AKS12] establishes non-constructively that any quantum system constrained by a local Hamiltonian has a zero-energy ground state, if the local Hamiltonian terms overlap only in a certain restricted way. In this paper, we present an efficient quantum algorithm to prepare this ground state for the special case of commuting projector terms. The related classical problem has been open for more than 34 years. Our algorithm follows the breakthrough ideas of Moser's [Moser09] classical algorithm and lifts his information theoretic argument to the quantum setting. A similar result has been independently published by Arad and Sattath [AS13] recently.
Abstract Estimating ground state energies of local Hamiltonian models is a central problem in quantum physics. The question of whether a given local Hamiltonian is frustration-free, meaning the ground state is the simultaneous ground state of all local interaction terms, is known as the Quantum k-SAT (k-QSAT) problem. In analogy to its classical Boolean constraint satisfaction counterpart, the NP-complete problem k-SAT, Quantum k-SAT is QMA1\hbox {QMA}_1QMA1​ QMA 1 -complete (for k≥3k\ge 3k≥3 k ≥ 3 , and where QMA1\hbox {QMA}_1QMA1​ QMA 1 is a quantum generalization of NP with one-sided error), and thus likely intractable. But whereas k-SAT has been well-studied for special tractable cases, as well as from a “parameterized complexity” perspective, much less is known in similar settings for k-QSAT. Here, we study the open problem of computing satisfying assignments to k-QSAT instances which have a “dimer covering” or “matching”; such systems are known to be frustration-free, but it remains open whether one can efficiently compute a ground state. Our results fall into three directions, all of which relate to the “dimer covering” setting: (1) We give a polynomial-time classical algorithm for k-QSAT when all qubits occur in at most two interaction terms or clauses. (2) We give a “parameterized algorithm” for k-QSAT instances from a certain non-trivial class, which allows us to obtain exponential speedups over brute force methods in some cases. This is achieved by reducing the problem to solving for a single root of a single univariate polynomial. An explicit family of hypergraphs, denoted Crash, for which such a speedup is obtained is introduced. (3) We conduct a structural graph theoretic study of 3-QSAT interaction graphs which have a “dimer covering”. We remark that the results of (2), in particular, introduce a number of new tools to the study of Quantum SAT, including graph theoretic concepts such as transfer filtrations and blow-ups from algebraic geometry.
The recently proven Quantum Lovasz Local Lemma generalises the well-known Lovasz Local Lemma. It states that, if a collection of subspace constraints are "weakly dependent", there necessarily exists a state satisfying all constraints. It implies e.g. that certain instances of the kQSAT quantum satisfiability problem are necessarily satisfiable, or that many-body systems with "not too many" interactions are always frustration-free. However, the QLLL only asserts existence; it says nothing about how to find the state. Inspired by Moser's breakthrough classical results, we present a constructive version of the QLLL in the setting of commuting constraints, proving that a simple quantum algorithm converges efficiently to the required state. In fact, we provide two different proofs, one using a novel quantum coupling argument, the other a more explicit combinatorial analysis. Both proofs are independent of the QLLL. So these results also provide independent, constructive proofs of the commutative QLLL itself, but strengthen it significantly by giving an efficient algorithm for finding the state whose existence is asserted by the QLLL. We give an application of the constructive commutative QLLL to convergence of CP maps. We also extend these results to the non-commutative setting. However, our proof of the general constructive QLLL relies on a conjecture which we are only able to prove in special cases.
The Quantum Satisfiability problem generalizes the Boolean satisfiability problem to the quantum setting by replacing classical clauses with local projectors. The Quantum Lovász Local Lemma gives a sufficient condition for a Quantum Satisfiability problem to be satisfiable [AKS12], by generalizing the classical Lovász Local Lemma. The next natural question that arises is: can a satisfying quantum state be efficiently found, when these conditions hold? In this work we present such an algorithm, with the additional requirement that all the projectors commute. The proof follows the information theoretic proof given by Moser's breakthrough result in the classical setting [Mos09]. Similar results were independently published in [CS11,CSV13].
A broad range of quantum optimisation problems can be phrased as the question whether a specific system has a ground state at zero energy, i.e. whether its Hamiltonian is frustration free. Frustration-free Hamiltonians, in turn, play a central role for constructing and understanding new phases of matter in quantum many-body physics. Unfortunately, determining whether this is the case is known to be a complexity-theoretically intractable problem. This makes it highly desirable to search for efficient heuristics and algorithms in order to, at least, partially answer this question. Here we prove a general criterion -- a sufficient condition -- under which a local Hamiltonian is guaranteed to be frustration free by lifting Shearer's theorem from classical probability theory to the quantum world. Remarkably, evaluating this condition proceeds via a fully classical analysis of a hard-core lattice gas at negative fugacity on the Hamiltonian's interaction graph which as a statistical mechanics problem is of interest in their own right. We concretely apply this criterion to local Hamiltonians on various regular lattices, while bringing to bear the tools of spin glass theory which permit us to obtain new bounds on the SAT/UNSAT transition in random quantum satisfiability. These also lead us to natural conjectures for when such bounds will be exact (tight), as well as to a novel notion of universality for these computer science problems. Besides providing concrete algorithms leading to detailed and quantitative insights, this underscores the power of marrying classical statistical mechanics with quantum computation and complexity theory.
The Quantum Satisfiability problem generalizes the Boolean satisfiability problem to the quantum setting by replacing classical clauses with local projectors. The Quantum Lov\'asz Local Lemma gives a sufficient condition for a Quantum Satisfiability problem to be satisfiable~\cite{ambainis2012quantum}, by generalizing the classical Lov\'asz Local Lemma. The next natural question that arises is: can a satisfying quantum state be \emph{efficiently} found, when these conditions hold? In this work we present such an algorithm, with the additional requirement that all the projectors commute. The proof follows the information theoretic proof given by Moser's breakthrough result in the classical setting~\cite{moser2009constructiveSTOC}. Similar results were independently published in~\cite{cubitt2011constructive, cubitt2013quantum}.