Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2311.17388 · Quantum

End-to-end complexity for simulating the Schwinger model on quantum computers

Kazuki Sakamoto, Hayata Morisaki, Junichi Haruna, Etsuko Itou, Keisuke Fujii, Kosuke Mitarai

Published Sep 17, 2024• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The Schwinger model is one of the simplest gauge theories. It is known that a topological term of the model leads to the infamous sign problem in the classical Monte Carlo method. In contrast to this, recently, quantum computing in Hamiltonian formalism has gained attention. In this work, we estimate the resources needed for quantum computers to compute physical quantities that are challenging to compute on classical computers. Specifically, we propose an efficient implementation of block-encoding of the Schwinger model Hamiltonian. Considering the structure of the Hamiltonian, this block-encoding with a normalization factor of O(N3) can be implemented using O(N+log2⁡(N/ε)) T gates. As an end-to-end application, we compute the vacuum persistence amplitude. As a result, we found that for a system size N=128 and an additive error ε=0.01 , with an evolution time t and a lattice spacing a satisfying t/2a=10 , the vacuum persistence amplitude can be calculated using about 1013 T gates. Our results provide insights into predictions about the performance of quantum computers in the FTQC and early FTQC era, clarifying the challenges in solving meaningful problems within a realistic timeframe.

DOI
10.22331/q-2024-09-17-1474

Related papers

Solving lattice gauge theories using the quantum Krylov algorithm and qubitization

Lewis W. Anderson, Martin Kiffner, Tom O’Leary +2 more

Computing vacuum states of lattice gauge theories (LGTs) containing fermionic degrees of freedom can present significant challenges for classical computation using Monte-Carlo methods. Quantum algorithms may offer a pathway towards more scalable computation of groundstate properties of LGTs. However, a comprehensive understanding of the quantum computational resources required for such a problem is thus far lacking. In this work, we investigate using the quantum subspace expansion (QSE) algorithm to compute the groundstate of the Schwinger model, an archetypal LGT describing quantum electrodynamics in one spatial dimension. We perform numerical simulations, including the effect of measurement noise, to extrapolate the resources required for the QSE algorithm to achieve a desired accuracy for a range of system sizes. Using this, we present a full analysis of the resources required to compute LGT vacuum states using a quantum algorithm using qubitization within a fault tolerant framework. We develop of a novel method for performing qubitization of a LGT Hamiltonian based on a 'linear combination of unitaries' (LCU) approach. The cost of the corresponding block encoding operation scales as O ~ ( N ) with system size N . Including the corresponding prefactors, our method reduces the gate cost by multiple orders of magnitude when compared to previous LCU methods for the QSE algorithm, which scales as O ~ ( N 2 ) when applied to the Schwinger model. While the qubit and single circuit T-gate cost resulting from our resource analysis is appealing to early fault-tolerant implementation, we find that the number of shots required to avoid numerical instability within the QSE procedure must be significantly reduced in order to improve the feasibility of the methodology we consider and discuss how this might be achieved.

arXiv:2403.08859•Quantum•Mar 25, 2025•6 citations

Classically emulated digital quantum simulation of the Schwinger model with a topological term via adiabatic state preparation

Bipasha Chakraborty, Masazumi Honda, Taku Izubuchi +2 more

We designed a protocol for digital quantum computation of a gauge theory with a topological term in Minkowski spacetime, which is practically inaccessible by standard lattice Monte Carlo simulations. We focus on $1+1$ dimensional quantum electrodynamics with the $\ensuremath{\theta}$ term known as the Schwinger model and test our protocol for this on an IBM simulator. We construct the true vacuum state of a lattice Schwinger model using adiabatic state preparation which, in turn, allows us to compute an expectation value of the fermion mass operator with respect to the vacuum. Upon taking a continuum limit we find that our result in the massless case agrees with the known exact result. In the massive case, we find an agreement with mass perturbation theory in the small-mass regime and deviations in the large-mass regime. We estimate computational costs required to take a reasonable continuum limit. Our results imply that digital quantum simulation appears a promising tool to explore nonperturbative aspects of gauge theories with real time and topological terms.

Physical review. D/Physical review. D.•May 13, 2022•61 citations

Towards Precision Quantum Simulation of Lattice Gauge Theories

Siddharth Hariprakash

Quantum simulation of lattice gauge theories offers a path to first-principles calculations of real-time dynamics and finite-density phenomena that are inaccessible to classical Euclidean Monte Carlo methods. Realizing this potential requires a pipeline of controlled approximations---lattice discretization, truncation, digitization, state preparation, time evolution, measurement, and continuum extrapolation---each contributing errors and computational costs. General algorithmic asymptotic complexity arguments capture only part of the cost picture: the practical resources required for end-to-end simulation depend on numerical pre-factors, the cost of the subroutines that various algorithms call, and structural features of the lattice theory, all of which the asymptotic scaling leaves unspecified. This thesis develops contributions that aim to make such dependencies explicit and quantitative. We begin with a rigorous analysis of the asymptotic gate complexity of product formulas and Quantum Signal Processing (QSP) for the time evolution of general classes of lattice Hamiltonians, identifying the parameter regimes in which each method is favorable and estimating the associated pre-factors numerically. Since the cost of QSP-based simulation is dominated (in regimes of practical interest) by the block-encoding subroutine it calls, we also develop several novel block-encoding constructions tailored to bosonic lattice field theories and show that signal-processing techniques can be repurposed as highly efficient block-encoding subroutines. We then turn to the problem of truncating the Kogut--Susskind electric-field Hilbert space. Existing error bounds rely on energy-conservation arguments and require the truncation to grow with simulation time. By exploiting Hilbert space fragmentation we derive the tightest error bounds known to date: they decay factorially in the truncation parameter and are independent of simulation time. We validate them numerically for U(1) pure gauge theory and the Schwinger model. Finally, we address the continuum limit in the presence of approximate time evolution. For product formulas, we show that Trotter errors correspond to irrelevant operators that vanish in the continuum limit, which yields a renormalization trajectory independent of the Trotter step size. More generally, we introduce the Statistically-Bounded Time Evolution (SBTE) protocol, an algorithm-independent framework that treats approximation errors as a systematic uncertainty to be driven below the working statistical precision. This decouples the continuum-limit prescription from the choice of time-evolution algorithm and provides a basis for end-to-end cost comparisons across simulation methods.

•May 1, 2026•0 citations

Digital Quantum Simulation of the Schwinger Model with Topological Term via Adiabatic State Preparation

Bipasha Chakraborty, Masazumi Honda, Taku Izubuchi +2 more

We perform a digital quantum simulation of a gauge theory with a topological term in Minkowski spacetime, which is practically inaccessible by standard lattice Monte Carlo simulations. We focus on $1+1$ dimensional quantum electrodynamics with the $\theta$-term known as the Schwinger model. We construct the true vacuum state of a lattice Schwinger model using adiabatic state preparation which, in turn, allows us to compute an expectation value of the fermion mass operator with respect to the vacuum. Upon taking a continuum limit we find that our result in massless case agrees with the known exact result. In massive case, we find an agreement with mass perturbation theory in small mass regime and deviations in large mass regime. We estimate computational costs required to take a reasonable continuum limit. Our results imply that digital quantum simulation is already useful tool to explore non-perturbative aspects of gauge theories with real time and topological terms.

•Jan 2, 2020•18 citations

The Utility of Sparse Error Detection in Quantum Simulations

Henry Froland, Dorota M. Grabowska, Sebastian Grieninger +8 more

The recent success of error detecting codes points toward their potential application to fault-tolerant simulations of nature. In this work, we examine the utility of sparse error detection for simulating lattice gauge theories using quantum computers. In particular, we study the time evolution of the lattice Schwinger model embedded into the Iceberg code family, $[[N+2, N, 2]]$, as well as the Hypercube code family, $[[2^N, N, 2]]$. The lattice of electrons and positrons in the axial gauge is embedded into a single code block or into multiple code blocks, and this work finds that large codeblocks are advantageous in the absence of connectivity constraints. Noisy classical simulations with realistic near-term error rates, infrequent syndrome measurements and physics-aware postselection are found to improve observable estimation. Under realistic noise rates for near-term quantum computers, this work finds that sparse error detection in quantum simulations has the potential to improve accuracy of observable estimation. Additional rounds of error detection are found to systematically drive errors in observables to the noise floor set by the code. These findings suggest that incorporating minimal implementations of fault tolerance in the near-term will enhance the performance of quantum simulations in nuclear physics and high-energy physics.

quant-pharXiv:2608.02944•Aug 5, 2026•0 citations

U(1) Wilson lattice gauge theories in digital quantum simulators

Christine A. Muschik, Markus Heyl, Esteban A. Martinez +7 more

Lattice gauge theories describe fundamental phenomena in nature, but calculating their real-time dynamics on classical computers is notoriously difficult. In a recent publication [Nature 534, 516 (2016)], we proposed and experimentally demonstrated a digital quantum simulation of the paradigmatic Schwinger model, a U(1)-Wilson lattice gauge theory describing the interplay between fermionic matter and gauge bosons. Here, we provide a detailed theoretical analysis of the performance and the potential of this protocol. Our strategy is based on analytically integrating out the gauge bosons, which preserves exact gauge invariance but results in complicated long-range interactions between the matter fields. Trapped-ion platforms are naturally suited to implementing these interactions, allowing for an efficient quantum simulation of the model, with a number of gate operations that scales only polynomially with system size. Employing numerical simulations, we illustrate that relevant phenomena can be observed in larger experimental systems, using as an example the production of particle--antiparticle pairs after a quantum quench. We investigate theoretically the robustness of the scheme towards generic error sources, and show that near-future experiments can reach regimes where finite-size effects are insignificant. We also discuss the challenges in quantum simulating the continuum limit of the theory. Using our scheme, fundamental phenomena of lattice gauge theories can be probed using a broad set of experimentally accessible observables, including the entanglement entropy and the vacuum persistence amplitude.

arXiv:1612.08653•New Journal of Physics•Sep 1, 2017•171 citations
The Schwinger model is one of the simplest gauge theories. It is known that a topological term of the model leads to the infamous sign problem in the classical Monte Carlo method. In contrast to this, recently, quantum computing in Hamiltonian formalism has gained attention. In this work, we estimate the resources needed for quantum computers to compute physical quantities that are challenging to compute on classical computers. Specifically, we propose an efficient implementation of block-encoding of the Schwinger model Hamiltonian. Considering the structure of the Hamiltonian, this block-encoding with a normalization factor of O(N3) can be implemented using O(N+log2⁡(N/ε)) T gates. As an end-to-end application, we compute the vacuum persistence amplitude. As a result, we found that for a system size N=128 and an additive error ε=0.01 , with an evolution time t and a lattice spacing a satisfying t/2a=10 , the vacuum persistence amplitude can be calculated using about 1013 T gates. Our results provide insights into predictions about the performance of quantum computers in the FTQC and early FTQC era, clarifying the challenges in solving meaningful problems within a realistic timeframe.
Computing vacuum states of lattice gauge theories (LGTs) containing fermionic degrees of freedom can present significant challenges for classical computation using Monte-Carlo methods. Quantum algorithms may offer a pathway towards more scalable computation of groundstate properties of LGTs. However, a comprehensive understanding of the quantum computational resources required for such a problem is thus far lacking. In this work, we investigate using the quantum subspace expansion (QSE) algorithm to compute the groundstate of the Schwinger model, an archetypal LGT describing quantum electrodynamics in one spatial dimension. We perform numerical simulations, including the effect of measurement noise, to extrapolate the resources required for the QSE algorithm to achieve a desired accuracy for a range of system sizes. Using this, we present a full analysis of the resources required to compute LGT vacuum states using a quantum algorithm using qubitization within a fault tolerant framework. We develop of a novel method for performing qubitization of a LGT Hamiltonian based on a 'linear combination of unitaries' (LCU) approach. The cost of the corresponding block encoding operation scales as O ~ ( N ) with system size N . Including the corresponding prefactors, our method reduces the gate cost by multiple orders of magnitude when compared to previous LCU methods for the QSE algorithm, which scales as O ~ ( N 2 ) when applied to the Schwinger model. While the qubit and single circuit T-gate cost resulting from our resource analysis is appealing to early fault-tolerant implementation, we find that the number of shots required to avoid numerical instability within the QSE procedure must be significantly reduced in order to improve the feasibility of the methodology we consider and discuss how this might be achieved.
We designed a protocol for digital quantum computation of a gauge theory with a topological term in Minkowski spacetime, which is practically inaccessible by standard lattice Monte Carlo simulations. We focus on 1+11+11+1 dimensional quantum electrodynamics with the $\ensuremath{\theta}$ term known as the Schwinger model and test our protocol for this on an IBM simulator. We construct the true vacuum state of a lattice Schwinger model using adiabatic state preparation which, in turn, allows us to compute an expectation value of the fermion mass operator with respect to the vacuum. Upon taking a continuum limit we find that our result in the massless case agrees with the known exact result. In the massive case, we find an agreement with mass perturbation theory in the small-mass regime and deviations in the large-mass regime. We estimate computational costs required to take a reasonable continuum limit. Our results imply that digital quantum simulation appears a promising tool to explore nonperturbative aspects of gauge theories with real time and topological terms.
Quantum simulation of lattice gauge theories offers a path to first-principles calculations of real-time dynamics and finite-density phenomena that are inaccessible to classical Euclidean Monte Carlo methods. Realizing this potential requires a pipeline of controlled approximations---lattice discretization, truncation, digitization, state preparation, time evolution, measurement, and continuum extrapolation---each contributing errors and computational costs. General algorithmic asymptotic complexity arguments capture only part of the cost picture: the practical resources required for end-to-end simulation depend on numerical pre-factors, the cost of the subroutines that various algorithms call, and structural features of the lattice theory, all of which the asymptotic scaling leaves unspecified. This thesis develops contributions that aim to make such dependencies explicit and quantitative. We begin with a rigorous analysis of the asymptotic gate complexity of product formulas and Quantum Signal Processing (QSP) for the time evolution of general classes of lattice Hamiltonians, identifying the parameter regimes in which each method is favorable and estimating the associated pre-factors numerically. Since the cost of QSP-based simulation is dominated (in regimes of practical interest) by the block-encoding subroutine it calls, we also develop several novel block-encoding constructions tailored to bosonic lattice field theories and show that signal-processing techniques can be repurposed as highly efficient block-encoding subroutines. We then turn to the problem of truncating the Kogut--Susskind electric-field Hilbert space. Existing error bounds rely on energy-conservation arguments and require the truncation to grow with simulation time. By exploiting Hilbert space fragmentation we derive the tightest error bounds known to date: they decay factorially in the truncation parameter and are independent of simulation time. We validate them numerically for U(1) pure gauge theory and the Schwinger model. Finally, we address the continuum limit in the presence of approximate time evolution. For product formulas, we show that Trotter errors correspond to irrelevant operators that vanish in the continuum limit, which yields a renormalization trajectory independent of the Trotter step size. More generally, we introduce the Statistically-Bounded Time Evolution (SBTE) protocol, an algorithm-independent framework that treats approximation errors as a systematic uncertainty to be driven below the working statistical precision. This decouples the continuum-limit prescription from the choice of time-evolution algorithm and provides a basis for end-to-end cost comparisons across simulation methods.
We perform a digital quantum simulation of a gauge theory with a topological term in Minkowski spacetime, which is practically inaccessible by standard lattice Monte Carlo simulations. We focus on 1+11+11+1 dimensional quantum electrodynamics with the θ\thetaθ-term known as the Schwinger model. We construct the true vacuum state of a lattice Schwinger model using adiabatic state preparation which, in turn, allows us to compute an expectation value of the fermion mass operator with respect to the vacuum. Upon taking a continuum limit we find that our result in massless case agrees with the known exact result. In massive case, we find an agreement with mass perturbation theory in small mass regime and deviations in large mass regime. We estimate computational costs required to take a reasonable continuum limit. Our results imply that digital quantum simulation is already useful tool to explore non-perturbative aspects of gauge theories with real time and topological terms.
The recent success of error detecting codes points toward their potential application to fault-tolerant simulations of nature. In this work, we examine the utility of sparse error detection for simulating lattice gauge theories using quantum computers. In particular, we study the time evolution of the lattice Schwinger model embedded into the Iceberg code family, [[N+2,N,2]][[N+2, N, 2]][[N+2,N,2]], as well as the Hypercube code family, [[2N,N,2]][[2^N, N, 2]][[2N,N,2]]. The lattice of electrons and positrons in the axial gauge is embedded into a single code block or into multiple code blocks, and this work finds that large codeblocks are advantageous in the absence of connectivity constraints. Noisy classical simulations with realistic near-term error rates, infrequent syndrome measurements and physics-aware postselection are found to improve observable estimation. Under realistic noise rates for near-term quantum computers, this work finds that sparse error detection in quantum simulations has the potential to improve accuracy of observable estimation. Additional rounds of error detection are found to systematically drive errors in observables to the noise floor set by the code. These findings suggest that incorporating minimal implementations of fault tolerance in the near-term will enhance the performance of quantum simulations in nuclear physics and high-energy physics.
Lattice gauge theories describe fundamental phenomena in nature, but calculating their real-time dynamics on classical computers is notoriously difficult. In a recent publication [Nature 534, 516 (2016)], we proposed and experimentally demonstrated a digital quantum simulation of the paradigmatic Schwinger model, a U(1)-Wilson lattice gauge theory describing the interplay between fermionic matter and gauge bosons. Here, we provide a detailed theoretical analysis of the performance and the potential of this protocol. Our strategy is based on analytically integrating out the gauge bosons, which preserves exact gauge invariance but results in complicated long-range interactions between the matter fields. Trapped-ion platforms are naturally suited to implementing these interactions, allowing for an efficient quantum simulation of the model, with a number of gate operations that scales only polynomially with system size. Employing numerical simulations, we illustrate that relevant phenomena can be observed in larger experimental systems, using as an example the production of particle--antiparticle pairs after a quantum quench. We investigate theoretically the robustness of the scheme towards generic error sources, and show that near-future experiments can reach regimes where finite-size effects are insignificant. We also discuss the challenges in quantum simulating the continuum limit of the theory. Using our scheme, fundamental phenomena of lattice gauge theories can be probed using a broad set of experimentally accessible observables, including the entanglement entropy and the vacuum persistence amplitude.