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arXiv:2102.04313

Long-time simulations with high fidelity on quantum hardware

Joe Gibbs, Kaitlin Gili, Zoë Holmes, Benjamin Commeau, Andrew Arrasmith, Łukasz Cincio, Patrick J. Coles, Andrew T. Sornborger

Published Feb 8, 2021• 28 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Moderate-size quantum computers are now publicly accessible over the cloud, opening the exciting possibility of performing dynamical simulations of quantum systems. However, while rapidly improving, these devices have short coherence times, limiting the depth of algorithms that may be successfully implemented. Here we demonstrate that, despite these limitations, it is possible to implement long-time, high fidelity simulations on current hardware. Specifically, we simulate an XY-model spin chain on the Rigetti and IBM quantum computers, maintaining a fidelity of at least 0.9 for over 600 time steps. This is a factor of 150 longer than is possible using the iterated Trotter method. Our simulations are performed using a new algorithm that we call the fixed state Variational Fast Forwarding (fsVFF) algorithm. This algorithm decreases the circuit depth and width required for a quantum simulation by finding an approximate diagonalization of a short time evolution unitary. Crucially, fsVFF only requires finding a diagonalization on the subspace spanned by the initial state, rather than on the total Hilbert space as with previous methods, substantially reducing the required resources. We further demonstrate the viability of fsVFF through large numerical implementations of the algorithm, as well as an analysis of its noise resilience and the scaling of simulation errors.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2102.04313

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Moderate-size quantum computers are now publicly accessible over the cloud, opening the exciting possibility of performing dynamical simulations of quantum systems. However, while rapidly improving, these devices have short coherence times, limiting the depth of algorithms that may be successfully implemented. Here we demonstrate that, despite these limitations, it is possible to implement long-time, high fidelity simulations on current hardware. Specifically, we simulate an XY-model spin chain on the Rigetti and IBM quantum computers, maintaining a fidelity of at least 0.9 for over 600 time steps. This is a factor of 150 longer than is possible using the iterated Trotter method. Our simulations are performed using a new algorithm that we call the fixed state Variational Fast Forwarding (fsVFF) algorithm. This algorithm decreases the circuit depth and width required for a quantum simulation by finding an approximate diagonalization of a short time evolution unitary. Crucially, fsVFF only requires finding a diagonalization on the subspace spanned by the initial state, rather than on the total Hilbert space as with previous methods, substantially reducing the required resources. We further demonstrate the viability of fsVFF through large numerical implementations of the algorithm, as well as an analysis of its noise resilience and the scaling of simulation errors.
Abstract Publicly accessible quantum computers open the exciting possibility of experimental dynamical quantum simulations. While rapidly improving, current devices have short coherence times, restricting the viable circuit depth. Despite these limitations, we demonstrate long-time, high fidelity simulations on current hardware. Specifically, we simulate an XY-model spin chain on Rigetti and IBM quantum computers, maintaining a fidelity over 0.9 for 150 times longer than is possible using the iterated Trotter method. Our simulations use an algorithm we call fixed state Variational Fast Forwarding (fsVFF). Recent work has shown an approximate diagonalization of a short time evolution unitary allows a fixed-depth simulation. fsVFF substantially reduces the required resources by only diagonalizing the energy subspace spanned by the initial state, rather than over the total Hilbert space. We further demonstrate the viability of fsVFF through large numerical simulations, and provide an analysis of the noise resilience and scaling of simulation errors.
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Dynamical quantum simulation may be one of the first applications to see quantum advantage. However, the circuit depth of standard Trotterization methods can rapidly exceed the coherence time of noisy quantum computers. This has led to recent proposals for variational approaches to dynamical simulation. In this work, we aim to make variational dynamical simulation even more practical and near-term. We propose a new algorithm called Variational Hamiltonian Diagonalization (VHD), which approximately transforms a given Hamiltonian into a diagonal form that can be easily exponentiated. VHD allows for fast forwarding, i.e., simulation beyond the coherence time of the quantum computer with a fixed-depth quantum circuit. It also removes Trotterization error and allows simulation of the entire Hilbert space. We prove an operational meaning for the VHD cost function in terms of the average simulation fidelity. Moreover, we prove that the VHD cost function does not exhibit a shallow-depth barren plateau, i.e., its gradient does not vanish exponentially. Our proof relies on locality of the Hamiltonian, and hence we connect locality to trainability. Our numerical simulations verify that VHD can be used for fast-forwarding dynamics.
Abstract Simulating quantum dynamics is expected to be performed more easily on a quantum computer than on a classical computer. However, the currently available quantum devices lack the capability to implement fault-tolerant quantum algorithms for quantum simulation. Hybrid classical quantum algorithms such as the variational quantum algorithms have been proposed to effectively use current term quantum devices. One promising approach to quantum simulation in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era is the diagonalisation based approach, with some of the promising examples being the subspace variational quantum simulator (SVQS), variational fast forwarding (VFF), fixed-state variational fast forwarding (fs-VFF), and the variational Hamiltonian diagonalisation (VHD) algorithms. However, these algorithms require a feedback loop between the classical and quantum computers, which can be a crucial bottleneck in practical application. Here, we present the classical quantum fast forwarding (CQFF) as an alternative diagonalisation based algorithm for quantum simulation. CQFF shares some similarities with SVQS, VFF, fs-VFF and VHD but removes the need for a classical-quantum feedback loop and controlled multi-qubit unitaries. The CQFF algorithm does not suffer from the barren plateau problem and the accuracy can be systematically increased. Furthermore, if the Hamiltonian to be simulated is expressed as a linear combination of tensored-Pauli matrices, the CQFF algorithm reduces to the task of sampling some many-body quantum state in a set of Pauli-rotated bases, which is easy to do in the NISQ era. We run the CQFF algorithm on existing quantum processors and demonstrate the promise of the CQFF algorithm for current-term quantum hardware. We compare CQFF with Trotterization for a XY spin chain model Hamiltonian and find that the CQFF algorithm can simulate the dynamics more than 10 5 times longer than Trotterization on current-term quantum hardware. This provides a 10 4 times improvement over the previous record.
A spin dimer is the drosophila of an entangled system and the building block for more complex states such as valence bond solids. Trotterization on noisy quantum devices cannot yet cleanly yield the dynamics of quantum systems over large time scales. Here, the authors use a combination of a direct measurement scheme and variational fast forwarding to mitigate the need for large circuit depths from several trotter steps, thereby yielding a class-leading fidelity for the dimer dynamical structure factor on IBM quantum hardware.
Quantum subspace diagonalization (QSD) algorithms have emerged as a competitive family of algorithms that avoid many of the optimization pitfalls associated with parameterized quantum circuit algorithms. While the vast majority of QSD algorithms have focused on solving the eigenpair problem for ground-state, excited-state, and thermal observable estimations, there has been a lot less work in considering QSD algorithms for the problem of quantum dynamical simulation. In this work, we propose several quantum Krylov fast-forwarding algorithms capable of predicting long-time dynamics well beyond the coherence time of current quantum hardware. Our algorithms use real-time evolved Krylov basis states prepared on a quantum computer and a multireference subspace method to ensure convergence towards high-fidelity, long-time dynamics. In particular, we show that the proposed multireference methodology provides a systematic way of trading off circuit depth with classical postprocessing complexity. We also demonstrate the efficacy of our approach through numerical implementations for several quantum chemistry problems, including the calculation of the autocorrelation and dipole moment correlation functions.