Rapid Initial-State Preparation for the Quantum Simulation of Strongly Correlated Molecules
Dominic William Berry, Yu Tong, Tanuj Khattar, Alec F. White, Tae In Kim, Guang Hao Low, Sergio Boixo, Zhiyan Ding, Lin Lin, Seunghoon Lee, Garnet Kin‐Lic Chan, Ryan Babbush, Nicholas C. Rubin
Studies on quantum algorithms for ground-state energy estimation often assume perfect ground-state preparation; however, in reality the initial state will have imperfect overlap with the true ground state. Here, we address that problem in two ways: by faster preparation of matrix-product-state (MPS) approximations and by more efficient filtering of the prepared state to find the ground-state energy. We show how to achieve unitary synthesis with a Toffoli complexity about 7 × lower than that in prior work and use that to derive a more efficient MPS-preparation method. For filtering, we present two different approaches: sampling and binary search. For both, we use the theory of window functions to avoid large phase errors and minimize the complexity. We find that the binary-search approach provides better scaling with the overlap at the cost of a larger constant factor, such that it will be preferred for overlaps less than about 0.003 . Finally, we estimate the total resources to perform ground-state energy estimation of Fe - S cluster systems, including the Fe Mo cofactor by estimating the overlap of different MPS initial states with potential ground states of the Fe Mo cofactor using an extrapolation procedure. With a modest MPS bond dimension of 4000 , our procedure produces an estimate of approximately 0.9 overlap squared with a candidate ground state of the Fe Mo cofactor, producing a total resource estimate of 7.3 × 10 10 Toffoli gates; neglecting the search over candidates and assuming the accuracy of the extrapolation, this validates prior estimates that have used perfect ground-state overlap. This presents an example of a practical path to prepare states of high overlap in a challenging-to-compute chemical system.
Studies on quantum algorithms for ground-state energy estimation often assume perfect ground-state preparation; however, in reality the initial state will have imperfect overlap with the true ground state. Here, we address that problem in two ways: by faster preparation of matrix-product-state (MPS) approximations and by more efficient filtering of the prepared state to find the ground-state energy. We show how to achieve unitary synthesis with a Toffoli complexity about 7 × lower than that in prior work and use that to derive a more efficient MPS-preparation method. For filtering, we present two different approaches: sampling and binary search. For both, we use the theory of window functions to avoid large phase errors and minimize the complexity. We find that the binary-search approach provides better scaling with the overlap at the cost of a larger constant factor, such that it will be preferred for overlaps less than about 0.003 . Finally, we estimate the total resources to perform ground-state energy estimation of Fe - S cluster systems, including the Fe Mo cofactor by estimating the overlap of different MPS initial states with potential ground states of the Fe Mo cofactor using an extrapolation procedure. With a modest MPS bond dimension of 4000 , our procedure produces an estimate of approximately 0.9 overlap squared with a candidate ground state of the Fe Mo cofactor, producing a total resource estimate of 7.3 × 10 10 Toffoli gates; neglecting the search over candidates and assuming the accuracy of the extrapolation, this validates prior estimates that have used perfect ground-state overlap. This presents an example of a practical path to prepare states of high overlap in a challenging-to-compute chemical system.
Quantum computation offers significant potential for accelerating the simulation of molecules and materials through algorithms such as quantum phase estimation (QPE). However, the expected speedup in ground-state energy estimation depends critically on the ability to efficiently prepare an initial state with high overlap with the true ground state. For strongly correlated molecules such as iron-sulfur clusters, this overlap is demonstrated to decay exponentially with system size. To alleviate this problem, we introduce an efficient classical algorithm to find entanglement-minimized orbitals (EMOs) and their orderings using spin-adapted low-bond-dimension matrix product states (MPS). The EMO basis yields a more compact ground-state representation, significantly easing initial state preparation for challenging systems. Our algorithm improves initial state overlap by nearly an order of magnitude over prior orbital optimization approaches for an iron-sulfur cluster with four irons, and is scalable to larger systems with many unpaired electrons, including the P-cluster and FeMo-cofactor in nitrogenase with eight transition metal centers. For these systems, we achieve substantial enhancements on initial state overlap by factors of O(10^{2}) and O(10^{5}), respectively, compared to results obtained using localized orbitals. Our results show that initial state preparation for these challenging systems requires far fewer resources than prior estimates suggested.
Compiling classically optimized matrix product states (MPSs) into quantum circuits is a promising route to initial-state preparation for strongly correlated molecules, but the accuracy, gate cost, and classical scalability of existing MPS compilation methods have not been systematically assessed. Here, we benchmark representative analytical, variational, and hybrid MPS compilation methods for strongly correlated systems including hydrogen chains and iron-sulfur clusters. We compare state infidelity, CNOT gate count, classical runtime, and parallel scalability across different system sizes and bond dimensions. We also introduce a divide-and-conquer environment-aware compilation algorithm (DCE), which optimizes each local isometry approximation according to its contribution to the prepared-state fidelity. The results reveal complementary operating regimes: direct variational compilation methods are gate-efficient for some smaller molecular systems with O(10) qubits and O(10) bond dimensions or moderate accuracy targets with infidelity of order 10−1, whereas divide-and-conquer methods scale more favorably for larger systems and relatively higher bond dimensions of O(10-102), particularly when target infidelities below 10−1 are required. Within the latter family, environment-aware optimization improves accuracy over unitary-distance-based compilation while retaining task-level parallelism. For the FeMo-cofactor (FeMoco), we find the DCE algorithm together with the MPS obtained in the entanglement-minimized orbitals (EMOs) provides a resource-efficient route to initial-state preparation. Our results provide practical guidance for selecting and developing MPS compilation methods for strongly correlated molecular simulations.
Quantum algorithms for ground-state energy estimation of chemical systems require a high-quality initial state. However, initial state preparation is commonly either neglected entirely, or assumed to be solved by a simple product state like Hartree-Fock. Even if a nontrivial state is prepared, strong correlations render ground-state overlap inadequate for quality assessment. In this work, we address the initial state preparation problem with an end-to-end algorithm that and the quality of initial states, accomplishing the latter with a new metric—the energy distribution. To be able to prepare more complicated initial states, we introduce an implementation technique for states in the form of a sum of Slater determinants that exhibits significantly better scaling than all prior approaches. We also propose low-precision quantum phase estimation (QPE) for further state quality refinement. The complete algorithm is capable of generating high-quality states for energy estimation, and is shown in select cases to lower the overall estimation cost by several orders of magnitude when compared with the best single product state ansatz. More broadly, the energy distribution picture suggests that the goal of QPE should be reinterpreted as generating improvements compared to the energy of the initial state and other classical estimates: such an improvement can still be achieved even if QPE does not project directly onto the ground state. Finally, we show how the energy distribution can help in identifying potential quantum advantage. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Preparing the ground state of a given Hamiltonian and estimating its ground energy are important but computationally hard tasks. However, given some additional information, these problems can be solved efficiently on a quantum computer. We assume that an initial state with non-trivial overlap with the ground state can be efficiently prepared, and the spectral gap between the ground energy and the first excited energy is bounded from below. With these assumptions we design an algorithm that prepares the ground state when an upper bound of the ground energy is known, whose runtime has a logarithmic dependence on the inverse error. When such an upper bound is not known, we propose a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm to estimate the ground energy, where the dependence of the number of queries to the initial state on the desired precision is exponentially improved compared to the current state-of-the-art algorithm proposed in [Ge et al. 2019]. These two algorithms can then be combined to prepare a ground state without knowing an upper bound of the ground energy. We also prove that our algorithms reach the complexity lower bounds by applying it to the unstructured search problem and the quantum approximate counting problem.
Quantum computers can accurately compute ground state energies using phase estimation, but this requires a guiding state that has significant overlap with the true ground state. For large molecules and extended materials, it becomes difficult to find guiding states with good ground state overlap for growing molecule sizes. Additionally, the required number of qubits and quantum gates may become prohibitively large. One approach for dealing with these challenges is to use a quantum embedding method, which allows a reduction to one or multiple smaller quantum cores embedded in a larger quantum region. In such situations, it is unclear how the embedding method affects the hardness of constructing good guiding states. In this work, we therefore investigate the preparation of guiding states in the context of quantum embedding methods. We extend previous work on quantum impurity problems, a framework in which we can rigorously analyze the embedding of a subset of orbitals. While there exist results for optimal active orbital space selection in terms of energy minimization, we rigorously demonstrate how the same principles can be used to define selected orbital spaces for state preparation in terms of the overlap with the ground state. Moreover, we perform numerical studies of molecular systems relevant to biochemistry, one field in which quantum embedding methods are required due to the large size of biomacromolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. We investigate two different embedding strategies which can exhibit qualitatively different orbital entanglement. In all cases, we demonstrate that the easy-to-obtain mean-field state will have a sufficiently high overlap with the target state to perform quantum phase estimation.
Quantum algorithms for ground-state energy estimation require initial states with non-negligible fidelity to the ground state. Guided by classical simulations, we design shallow circuits for the two-dimensional half-filled Hubbard model by first preparing an approximate Heisenberg ground state and then applying charge-fluctuation gates derived directly from the Schrieffer-Wolff (SW) generator. For the Heisenberg model, we demonstrate effective parameter transfer from a 4×4 lattice to lattices up to 10×10 without further optimization. We obtain promising lower bounds on the ground-state fidelity using tensor-network simulations, variational Monte Carlo reference states, and estimates of the ground-state energy and singlet gap. Exact 4×4 calculations show that the SW gates substantially improve the Hubbard ground-state fidelity of the embedded Heisenberg state. The successful Heisenberg parameter transfer supports the use of these small-lattice results to design shallow Hubbard circuits on larger lattices beyond the reach of classical simulations. For a 10×10 lattice, the estimated preparation cost is on the order of 105T gates, including Clifford+T synthesis, which is well within the megaquop regime. These results offer a route to low-cost initial-state preparation for ground-starongly correlated systems.