Quantum-enhanced computing methods are promising candidates to solve currently intractable problems. We consider here a variational quantum eigensolver (VQE), that delegates costly state preparations and measurements to quantum hardware, while classical optimization techniques guide the quantum hardware to create a desired target state. In this work, we propose a bosonic VQE using superconducting microwave cavities, overcoming the typical restriction of a small Hilbert space when the VQE is qubit based. The considered platform allows for strong nonlinearities between photon modes, which are highly customisable and can be tuned in situ, i.e. during running experiments. Our proposal hence allows for the realization of a wide range of bosonic ansatz states, and is therefore especially useful when simulating models involving degrees of freedom that cannot be simply mapped to qubits, such as gauge theories, that include components which require infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. We thus propose to experimentally apply this bosonic VQE to the U(1) Higgs model including a topological term, which in general introduces a sign problem in the model, making it intractable with conventional Monte Carlo methods.
Quantum-enhanced computing methods are promising candidates to solve currently intractable problems. We consider here a variational quantum eigensolver (VQE), that delegates costly state preparations and measurements to quantum hardware, while classical optimization techniques guide the quantum hardware to create a desired target state. In this work, we propose a bosonic VQE using superconducting microwave cavities, overcoming the typical restriction of a small Hilbert space when the VQE is qubit based. The considered platform allows for strong nonlinearities between photon modes, which are highly customisable and can be tuned in situ, i.e. during running experiments. Our proposal hence allows for the realization of a wide range of bosonic ansatz states, and is therefore especially useful when simulating models involving degrees of freedom that cannot be simply mapped to qubits, such as gauge theories, that include components which require infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. We thus propose to experimentally apply this bosonic VQE to the U(1) Higgs model including a topological term, which in general introduces a sign problem in the model, making it intractable with conventional Monte Carlo methods.
Variational methods have long been used to study strongly-correlated quantum systems. Despite the successes of classical protocols, these are limited in the study of quantum systems, either due to numerical errors like the sign problem or the massive memory requirement to represent large quantum systems. Variational quantum eigensolvers (VQEs) overcome these problems and as a result have been an exciting area of research for the past decade. VQEs use a hybrid classical-quantum set-up, where a cost function (usually the expectation value of an operator) is produced by the quantum processor and then optimized on a classical computer. VQEs have been applied to fields such as quantum chemistry, condensed matter physics, high-energy physics, and classical optimization problems. In this thesis, we investigate VQEs to study gauge theories, which describe fundamental physical interactions and are hard to simulate classically. We use two different approaches in implementing a VQE to study two classes of problems. In the first half of the thesis, we design a VQE to study the U(1) Higgs gauge theory in one spatial dimension. This model is particularly interesting due to the presence of a topological term, which is a candidate to explain the observed CP violation in the universe. In order to perform a quantum simulation of the U(1) Higgs model, the theory is cast on a lattice. In the limit where the lattice size is large and the lattice spacing is small, the continuum limit can be reached and the results correctly resemble the original theory. However, when the lattice is too small or the spacing too big, results are spoiled by finite size effects. In this thesis, we investigate the effects of a finite lattice and determine the parameters to correctly reproduce a first-order phase transition of the continuous theory. Importantly, to resemble a realistic experiment, we include the statistical and intrinsic quantum noise in our VQE. We design the protocol to be applied on a microwave-photonic platform, which is well-suited due to the bosonic nature of the theory's electrical modes. \nIn the second half of the thesis, we design a new class of VQEs, based on a measurement-based quantum computer (MBQC) instead of the typical circuit-based set-up. Rather than performing gates on an initial state, a MBQC transforms an initial state by entangling it with a number of auxiliary qubits which are subsequently measured, resulting in a modification of the initial state. In this part of the thesis, we compare the standard, circuit-based VQE with our newly-designed measurement-based VQE (MB-VQE) through two meaningful examples. First, we introduce a novel way to construct variational state families, using measurement-based techniques, that is more costly to access with circuit-based VQEs. We apply this technique to find the ground state of a two-dimensional, periodic Z2 matter-free lattice gauge theory. In the second approach, we directly translate \nthe circuit-based VQE to a MB-VQE and apply this to the U(1) Schwinger lattice gauge theory, which is used as a benchmarking problem for VQEs. These examples demonstrate that there are specific problems which are better suited for a MB-VQE.
Quantum harmonic oscillators, or qumodes, provide a promising and versatile framework for quantum computing. Unlike qubits, which are limited to two discrete levels, qumodes have an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, making them well-suited for a wide range of quantum simulations. In this work, we focus on the molecular electronic structure problem. We propose an approach to map the electronic Hamiltonian into a qumode bosonic problem that can be solved on bosonic quantum devices using the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE). Our approach is demonstrated through the computation of ground potential energy surfaces for benchmark model systems, including H 2 and the linear H 4 molecule. The preparation of trial qumode states and the computation of expectation values leverage universal ansatzes based on the echoed conditional displacement (ECD), or the selective number-dependent arbitrary phase (SNAP) operations. These techniques are compatible with circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) platforms, where microwave resonators coupled to superconducting transmon qubits can offer an efficient hardware realization. This work establishes a new pathway for simulating many-fermion systems, highlighting the potential of hybrid qubit-qumode quantum devices in advancing quantum computational chemistry.
Computing the vacuum and energy spectrum in non-Abelian, interacting lattice gauge theories remains an open challenge, in part because approximating the continuum limit requires large lattices and huge Hilbert spaces. To address this difficulty with near-term quantum computing devices, we adapt the variational quantum eigensolver to non-Abelian gauge theories. We outline scaling advantages when using a spin-network basis to simulate the gauge-invariant Hilbert space and develop a systematic state preparation ansatz that creates gauge-invariant excitations while alleviating the barren plateau problem. We illustrate our method in the context of SU(2) Yang-Mills theory by testing it on a minimal toy model consisting of a single vertex in 3+1 dimensions. In this toy model, simulations allow us to investigate the impact of noise expected in current quantum devices.
Quantum computers have the potential to deliver speed-ups for solving certain important problems that are intractable for classical counterparts, making them a promising avenue for advancing modern computation. However, many quantum algorithms require deep quantum circuits, which are challenging to implement on current noisy devices. To address this limitation, variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) have been actively developed, enabling practical quantum computing in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era. Among them, the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) stands out as a leading approach for solving problems in quantum chemistry, many-body physics, and even integer factorization. The VQE algorithm can be implemented on various quantum hardware platforms, including photonic systems, quantum dots, trapped ions, neutral atoms, and superconducting circuits. In particular, photonic platforms offer several advantages: they operate at room temperature, exhibit low decoherence, and support multiple degrees of freedom, making them suitable for scalable, high-dimensional quantum computation. Here we present methodologies for realizing VQE on photonic systems, highlighting their potential for practical quantum computing. We first provide a theoretical overview of the VQE framework, focusing on the procedure for variationally estimating ground state energies. We then explore how photonic systems can implement these processes, showing that a wide variety of problems can be addressed using either multiple qubit states or a single qudit state.
We introduce the qumode subspace variational quantum eigensolver (QSS-VQE), a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm for computing molecular excited states using the Fock basis of bosonic qumodes in circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) devices. This approach harnesses the native universal gate sets of qubit-qumode architectures to construct highly expressive variational ansatze, offering potential advantages over conventional qubit-based methods. In QSS-VQE, the electronic structure Hamiltonian is first mapped to a qubit representation and subsequently embedded into the Fock space of bosonic qumodes, enabling efficient state preparation and reduced quantum resource requirements. We demonstrate the performance of QSS-VQE through simulations of molecular excited states, including dihydrogen and a conical intersection in cytosine. Additionally, we explore a bosonic model Hamiltonian to assess the expressivity of qumode gates, identifying regimes where qumode-based implementations outperform purely qubit-based approaches. These results highlight the promise of leveraging bosonic degrees of freedom for enhanced quantum simulation of complex molecular systems.
Abstract The variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) is a method that uses a hybrid quantum-classical computational approach to find eigenvalues of a Hamiltonian. VQE has been proposed as an alternative to fully quantum algorithms such as quantum phase estimation (QPE) because fully quantum algorithms require quantum hardware that will not be accessible in the near future. VQE has been successfully applied to solve the electronic Schrödinger equation for a variety of small molecules. However, the scalability of this method is limited by two factors: the complexity of the quantum circuits and the complexity of the classical optimization problem. Both of these factors are affected by the choice of the variational ansatz used to represent the trial wave function. Hence, the construction of an efficient ansatz is an active area of research. Put another way, modern quantum computers are not capable of executing deep quantum circuits produced by using currently available ansatzes for problems that map onto more than several qubits. In this review, we present recent developments in the field of designing efficient ansatzes that fall into two categories—chemistry–inspired and hardware–efficient—that produce quantum circuits that are easier to run on modern hardware. We discuss the shortfalls of ansatzes originally formulated for VQE simulations, how they are addressed in more sophisticated methods, and the potential ways for further improvements.