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arXiv:2202.01170 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Kernel function based quantum algorithms for finite temperature quantum simulation

Hai Wang, Jue Nan, Tao Zhang, Xingze Qiu, Wenlan Chen, Xiaopeng Li

Published Aug 1, 2023• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Computing finite temperature properties of a quantum many-body system is key to describing a broad range of correlated quantum many-body physics from quantum chemistry and condensed matter to thermal quantum field theories. Quantum computing, which has seen rapid developments in recent years, has a huge potential to impact the computation of quantum thermodynamics. To fulfill these potential impacts, it is crucial to design quantum algorithms that utilize the computation power of quantum computing devices. Here, we present a quantum kernel function expansion (QKFE) algorithm for solving thermodynamic properties of quantum many-body systems. In this quantum algorithm, the many-body density of states is approximated by a kernel Fourier expansion, whose expansion moments are obtained by random state sampling and quantum interferometric measurements. Compared to its classical counterpart, namely, the kernel polynomial method (KPM), QKFE has an exponential advantage in the cost of both time and memory. In computing low temperature properties, QKFE becomes inefficient, similar to classical KPM. To resolve this difficulty, we further construct a thermal ensemble iteration (THEI) protocol which starts from the trivial limit of an infinite temperature ensemble and approaches the low temperature regime step by step. For quantum Hamiltonians, whose ground states are preparable with polynomial quantum circuits, THEI has an overall polynomial complexity. We demonstrate its efficiency with applications to one- and two-dimensional quantum spin models and a fermionic lattice. With our analysis of the realization with digital and analog quantum devices, we believe the quantum algorithm is accessible to current quantum technology.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.108.085102

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Computing finite temperature properties of a quantum many-body system is key to describing a broad range of correlated quantum many-body physics from quantum chemistry and condensed matter to thermal quantum field theories. Quantum computing, which has seen rapid developments in recent years, has a huge potential to impact the computation of quantum thermodynamics. To fulfill these potential impacts, it is crucial to design quantum algorithms that utilize the computation power of quantum computing devices. Here, we present a quantum kernel function expansion (QKFE) algorithm for solving thermodynamic properties of quantum many-body systems. In this quantum algorithm, the many-body density of states is approximated by a kernel Fourier expansion, whose expansion moments are obtained by random state sampling and quantum interferometric measurements. Compared to its classical counterpart, namely, the kernel polynomial method (KPM), QKFE has an exponential advantage in the cost of both time and memory. In computing low temperature properties, QKFE becomes inefficient, similar to classical KPM. To resolve this difficulty, we further construct a thermal ensemble iteration (THEI) protocol which starts from the trivial limit of an infinite temperature ensemble and approaches the low temperature regime step by step. For quantum Hamiltonians, whose ground states are preparable with polynomial quantum circuits, THEI has an overall polynomial complexity. We demonstrate its efficiency with applications to one- and two-dimensional quantum spin models and a fermionic lattice. With our analysis of the realization with digital and analog quantum devices, we believe the quantum algorithm is accessible to current quantum technology.
Characterizing quantum phases-of-matter at finite-temperature is essential for understanding complex materials and large-scale thermodynamic phenomena. Here, we develop algorithmic protocols for simulating quantum thermodynamics on quantum hardware through quantum kernel function expansion (QKFE), producing the free energy as an analytic function of temperature with uniform convergence. These protocols are demonstrated by simulating transverse field Ising and XY models with superconducting qubits. In both analogue and digital implementations of the QKFE algorithms, we exhibit quantitative agreement of our quantum simulation experiments with the exact results. Our approach provides a general framework for computing thermodynamic potentials on programmable quantum devices, granting access to key thermodynamic properties such as entropy, heat capacity and criticality, with far-reaching implications for material design and drug development.
Quantum statistical mechanics allows us to extract thermodynamic information from a microscopic description of a many-body system. A key step is the calculation of the density of states, from which the partition function and all finite-temperature equilibrium thermodynamic quantities can be calculated. In this work, we devise and implement a quantum algorithm to perform an estimation of the density of states on a digital quantum computer which is inspired by the kernel polynomial method. Classically, the kernel polynomial method allows us to sample spectral functions via a Chebyshev polynomial expansion. Our algorithm computes moments of the expansion on quantum hardware using a combination of random-state preparation for stochastic trace evaluation and a controlled unitary operator. We use our algorithm to estimate the density of states of a nonintegrable Hamiltonian on the Quantinuum H1-1 trapped ion chip for a controlled register of 18 qubits. This not only represents a state-of-the-art calculation of thermal properties of a many-body system on quantum hardware, but also exploits the controlled unitary evolution of a many-qubit register on an unprecedented scale. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Recent progress in materials synthesis combined with advances in computational science have opened up an opportunity to design new materials with specific properties. Semiconductors, heterostructures, and thin layered films are used for energy harvesting and solar cells. Transition metal oxides and metallic surfaces with deposited magnetic molecules are used for signal conversion, nonvolatile memory modules and spintronics. Due to growing complexity of the new materials the most efficient approach to their design requires combined experimental and theoretical effort. In order to advance our understanding of the complicated physics of the modern materials new theoretical methods based on controlled, reliable, computationally efficient and systematically improvable approximations describing correlation and finite-temperature effects are needed. Density functional theory (DFT) remains a method of choice for materials science calculations due to its low computational cost. However, despite all recent efforts, the majority DFT applications are limited to weakly correlated systems and zero temperature. The lack of systematic improvability, inaccurate treatment of strongly correlated systems will continue to restrict the domain of DFT applications. The multi-reference wave-function methods can provide an accurate description of the strongly correlated systems. Unfortunately, these methods are computationally expensive. In spite of recent improvement the computational complexity will likely to hinder the applications of wave-function based methods to materials science in foreseeable future. Finite-temperature Green's function methods offer several advantages such as systematic improvability, access to the excitation spectrum, thermodynamic properties and straightforward implementation of embedding frameworks. It has been realized long time ago and has been successfully used in condensed matter physics to study model systems. The applications of such methods to realistic systems are impeded due to lack of theoretical approaches providing chemical accuracy and efficient computational algorithms. In this dissertation, these shortcomings are addressed by developing self-energy embedding theory and its extensive comparison to established quantum chemistry methods. New numerical algorithms for efficient application of the finite-temperature Green's function methods to molecular and extended systems were developed. Properties of the second-order Green's function theory (GF2) in the context of quantum chemistry were investigated. Additionally, a new range-separated hybrid functional combining GF2 and DFT was developed and benchmarked.
Efficient and stable algorithms for the calculation of spectral quantities and correlation functions are some of the key tools in computational condensed-matter physics. In this paper basic properties and recent developments of Chebyshev expansion based algorithms and the kernel polynomial method are reviewed. Characterized by a resource consumption that scales linearly with the problem dimension these methods enjoyed growing popularity over the last decade and found broad application not only in physics. Representative examples from the fields of disordered systems, strongly correlated electrons, electron-phonon interaction, and quantum spin systems are discussed in detail. In addition, an illustration on how the kernel polynomial method is successfully embedded into other numerical techniques, such as cluster perturbation theory or Monte Carlo simulation, is provided.
Thermal properties of nanomaterials are crucial to not only improving our fundamental understanding of condensed matter systems, but also to developing novel materials for applications spanning research and industry. Since quantum effects arise at the nano-scale, these systems are difficult to simulate on classical computers. Quantum computers can efficiently simulate quantum many-body systems, yet current quantum algorithms for calculating thermal properties of these systems incur significant computational costs in that they either prepare the full thermal state on the quantum computer, or they must sample a number of pure states from a distribution that grows with system size. Canonical thermal pure quantum (TPQ) states provide a promising path to estimating thermal properties of quantum materials as they neither require preparation of the full thermal state nor require a growing number of samples with system size. Here, we present an algorithm for preparing canonical TPQ states on quantum computers. We compare three different circuit implementations for the algorithm and demonstrate their capabilities in estimating thermal properties of quantum materials. Due to its increasing accuracy with system size and flexibility in implementation, we anticipate that this method will enable finite temperature explorations of relevant quantum materials on near-term quantum computers.
Wave function methods have offered a robust, systematically improvable means to study the ground-state properties in quantum many-body systems. Theories like coupled cluster and their derivatives provide highly accurate approximations to the energy landscape at a reasonable computational cost. Analogs of such methods to study thermal properties, though highly desirable, have been lacking because evaluating thermal properties involve a trace over the entire Hilbert space. Approximating every state in the Hilbert space is an impossible task. Besides, excited-state theories are not as well studied as ground-state ones. In this thesis, we overcome these difficulties by employing thermofield dynamics, a theory that allows the purification of the ensemble density matrix and constructs a pure wave function that encodes the equilibrium thermal behavior of the system. Ensemble averages become expectation values over this so-called thermal state. Around this thermal state, we develop a framework to extend ground-state wave function theories to non-zero temperatures. We discuss explicit formulations of mean-field, configuration interaction, and coupled cluster theories for thermal properties of fermions in the grand canonical ensemble. For fermions in the canonical ensemble, we present mean-field, configuration interaction, and perturbation theories. We also discuss thermal mean-field, configuration interaction, and coupled cluster formalisms for \SU systems. To assess the quality of these approximations, we study both model and small atomic and molecular as benchmark electronic problems while comparing against exact results. For spins, we use the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick and the one-dimensional transverse field Ising models as our reference systems. Indeed, the thermal methods perform reasonably well while merely adding a prefactor to the computational cost. They also inherit all the properties, good or bad, from their ground-state counterparts, signifying the robustness of our formalism.