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arXiv:2112.14046 · Physical Review Research

Simulating quantum circuits using the multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz

A. V. Berezutskii, I. A. Luchnikov, Aleksey K. Fedorov

Published Jan 16, 2025• 3 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Understanding the limiting capabilities of classical methods in simulating complex quantum systems is of paramount importance for quantum technologies. Although many advanced approaches have been proposed and recently used to challenge quantum advantage experiments, novel efficient methods for the approximate simulation of complex quantum systems are still in high demand. Here, we propose a scalable technique for approximate simulations of intermediate-size quantum circuits on the basis of the multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA) and Riemannian optimization. The MERA is a tensor network, whose geometry together with orthogonality constraints imposed on its tensors allow approximating many-body quantum states lying beyond the area-law scaling of the entanglement entropy. We benchmark the proposed technique for brick-wall quantum circuits of up to 243 qubits with various depths up to 20 layers. Our approach paves a way to exploring efficient simulation techniques for quantum many-body systems.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.7.013063

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Strongly-correlated quantum many-body systems are difficult to study and simulate classically. We recently proposed a variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) based on the multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA) with tensors constrained to certain Trotter circuits. Here, we determine the scaling of computation costs for various critical spin chains which substantiates a polynomial quantum advantage in comparison to classical MERA simulations based on exact energy gradients or variational Monte Carlo. Algorithmic phase diagrams suggest an even greater separation for higher-dimensional systems. Hence, the Trotterized MERA VQE is a promising route for the efficient investigation of strongly-correlated quantum many-body systems on quantum computers. Furthermore, we show how the convergence can be substantially improved by building up the MERA layer by layer in the initialization stage and by scanning through the phase diagram during optimization. For the Trotter circuits being composed of single-qubit and two-qubit rotations, it is experimentally advantageous to have small rotation angles. We find that the average angle amplitude can be reduced considerably with negligible effect on the energy accuracy. Benchmark simulations suggest that the structure of the Trotter circuits for the TMERA tensors is not decisive; in particular, brick-wall circuits and parallel random-pair circuits yield very similar energy accuracies.
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