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:2502.18838 · Physical Review A

Comparison of encoding schemes for quantum computing of S > 1 / 2 spin chains

Erik Lötstedt, Kaoru Yamanouchi

Published May 28, 2025• 5 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We compare four different encoding schemes for the quantum computing of spin chains with a spin quantum number $S>1/2$: a compact mapping, a direct (or one-hot) mapping, a Dicke mapping, and a qudit mapping. The three different qubit encoding schemes are assessed by conducting Hamiltonian simulation for $1/2 \le S \le 5/2$ using a trapped-ion quantum computer. The qudit mapping is tested by running simulations with a simple noise model. The Dicke mapping, in which the spin states are encoded as superpositions of multi-qubit states, is found to be the most efficient because of the small number of terms in the qubit Hamiltonian. We also investigate the $S$-dependence of the time step length $Δτ$ in the Suzuki-Trotter approximation and find that, in order to obtain the same accuracy for all $S$, $Δτ$ should be inversely proportional to $S$.

DOI
10.1103/7mvy-zq7j

Related papers

Resource-efficient digital quantum simulation of d-level systems for photonic, vibrational, and spin-s Hamiltonians

Nicolas P. D. Sawaya, Tim Menke, Thi Ha Kyaw +3 more

Abstract Simulation of quantum systems is expected to be one of the most important applications of quantum computing, with much of the theoretical work so far having focused on fermionic and spin- $$\frac{1}{2}$$ 1 2 systems. Here, we instead consider encodings of d -level (i.e., qudit) quantum operators into multi-qubit operators, studying resource requirements for approximating operator exponentials by Trotterization. We primarily focus on spin- s and truncated bosonic operators in second quantization, observing desirable properties for approaches based on the Gray code, which to our knowledge has not been used in this context previously. After outlining a methodology for implementing an arbitrary encoding, we investigate the interplay between Hamming distances, sparsity patterns, bosonic truncation, and other properties of local operators. Finally, we obtain resource counts for five common Hamiltonian classes used in physics and chemistry, while modeling the possibility of converting between encodings within a Trotter step. The most efficient encoding choice is heavily dependent on the application and highly sensitive to d , although clear trends are present. These operation count reductions are relevant for running algorithms on near-term quantum hardware because the savings effectively decrease the required circuit depth. Results and procedures outlined in this work may be useful for simulating a broad class of Hamiltonians on qubit-based digital quantum computers.

arXiv:1909.12847•npj Quantum Information•Jun 2, 2020•162 citations

Error-mitigated quantum computing of Heisenberg spin chain dynamics

Erik Lötstedt, Lidong Wang, Ryuhei Yoshida +2 more

Abstract We simulate the time-dependent dynamics of a three-site spin chain described by the Heisenberg XXX Hamiltonian. The quantum circuit representing the time-dependent wave function is constructed using the Suzuki-Trotter approximation, and is executed on the quantum computer ibm_kawasaki. At each time step, the density matrix of the three-qubit state is reconstructed by state tomography. By applying four different mitigation methods, Clifford data regression, Pauli twirling, density matrix purification, and density matrix orthogonalization, we demonstrate that accurate time-dependent populations and density matrices can be calculated on noisy superconducting-qubit type quantum computers.

Physica Scripta•Feb 24, 2023•8 citations

Improving Hamiltonian encodings with the Gray code

Olivia Di Matteo, Anna E. McCoy, Peter Gysbers +3 more

Due to the limitations of present-day quantum hardware, it is especially critical to design algorithms that make the best possible use of available resources. When simulating quantum many-body systems on a quantum computer, straightforward encodings that transform many-body Hamiltonians into qubit Hamiltonians use $N$ of the available basis states of an $N$-qubit system, whereas ${2}^{N}$ are in theory available. We explore an efficient encoding that uses the entire set of basis states, where terms in the Hamiltonian are mapped to qubit operators with a Hamiltonian that acts on the basis states in Gray code order. This encoding is applied to the commonly studied problem of finding the ground-state energy of a deuteron with a simulated variational quantum eigensolver (VQE). It is compared to a standard ``one-hot'' encoding, and various trade-offs that arise are analyzed. The energy distribution of VQE solutions has smaller variance than the one obtained by the one-hot encoding even in the presence of simulated hardware noise, despite an increase in the number of measurements. The reduced number of qubits and a shorter-depth variational Ansatz enables the encoding of larger problems on current-generation machines. This encoding also demonstrates improvements for simulating time evolution of the same system, producing circuits for the evolution operators with reduced depth and roughly half the number of gates compared to a one-hot encoding.

arXiv:2008.05012•Physical Review A•Apr 2, 2021•74 citations

Simulation of vibrational dynamics using qubits and qudits

Erik Lötstedt, Kaoru Yamanouchi

We investigate the quantum computing of the vibrational dynamics of CO$_2$ and H$_2$O by constructing the vibrational third-order anharmonic Hamiltonian in qubit and qudit form by two types of qubit encodings (binary and direct) and a qudit encoding. We simulate the time-dependent vibrational population transfer using the three different encodings, including the effect of noise and find that the qudit encoding leads to the most accurate results both for CO$_2$ and H$_2$O because of the small number of terms in the qudit Hamiltonian as long as the same values of the entangling gate error rates are adopted. Although the entangling gate errors of current qudit quantum computers are approximately one order of magnitude larger than the entangling gate errors of current qubit quantum computers, our results suggest that the simulation of vibrational dynamics is a promising application for future qudit quantum computers.

quant-pharXiv:2605.12866•Physical Review A•May 14, 2026•0 citations

Qudit-based quantum simulation of fermionic systems

Mario Chizzini, Francesco Tacchino, Alessandro Chiesa +3 more

Model Hamiltonians described by fermionic operators are ubiquitous in physics and chemistry, but the quantum simulation of their properties is challenging on near-term quantum computers. Indeed, for any problem with more than two connected neighbors, standard mappings of fermions on qubits lead to many-body operators whose size increases with the size of the problem, quickly making the simulation unfeasible on noisy devices. Here we consider an alternative mapping based on qudits and the auxiliary fermion method, which leads to a significant reduction in the circuit depth and in the number of computational units to be controlled. These advantages increase for highly connected target Hamiltonians, such as lattices with long-range interactions or the molecular systems investigated in quantum chemistry. We numerically test our approach on qudits encoded in molecular spins, by performing the quantum simulation of a fermionic model on a small cluster. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Physical Review A•Dec 2, 2024•11 citations

Qudits for decomposing multiqubit gates and realizing quantum algorithms

Evgeniy O. Kiktenko, Anastasiia S. Nikolaeva, Aleksey K. Fedorov

The paradigm behind digital quantum computing inherits the idea of using binary information processing. Nature in fact gives much more rich structures of physical objects that can be used for encoding information, which is especially interesting in the quantum-mechanical domain. In this Colloquium several ideas are reviewed that indicate how multilevel quantum systems, also known as qudits, can be used for efficient realization of quantum algorithms, which are represented via standard qubit circuits. The focus in the Colloquium is on techniques for leveraging qudits for simplifying decomposition of multiqubit gates and for compressing quantum information by encoding multiple qubits in a single qudit. As discussed in the Colloquium, these approaches can be efficiently combined. This allows a reduction in the number of entangling (two-body) operations and the number of quantum information carriers used compared to straightforward qubit realizations. These theoretical schemes can be implemented with quantum computing platforms of various natures, such as trapped ions, neutral atoms, superconducting junctions, quantum light, spin systems, and molecules. The Colloquium concludes by summarizing a set of open problems whose resolution will be an important further step toward employing universal qudit-based processors for running qubit algorithms.

arXiv:2311.12003•Nov 20, 2023•1 citation
We compare four different encoding schemes for the quantum computing of spin chains with a spin quantum number S>1/2S>1/2S>1/2: a compact mapping, a direct (or one-hot) mapping, a Dicke mapping, and a qudit mapping. The three different qubit encoding schemes are assessed by conducting Hamiltonian simulation for 1/2≤S≤5/21/2 \le S \le 5/21/2≤S≤5/2 using a trapped-ion quantum computer. The qudit mapping is tested by running simulations with a simple noise model. The Dicke mapping, in which the spin states are encoded as superpositions of multi-qubit states, is found to be the most efficient because of the small number of terms in the qubit Hamiltonian. We also investigate the SSS-dependence of the time step length ΔτΔτΔτ in the Suzuki-Trotter approximation and find that, in order to obtain the same accuracy for all SSS, ΔτΔτΔτ should be inversely proportional to SSS.
Abstract Simulation of quantum systems is expected to be one of the most important applications of quantum computing, with much of the theoretical work so far having focused on fermionic and spin- 12\frac{1}{2}21​ 1 2 systems. Here, we instead consider encodings of d -level (i.e., qudit) quantum operators into multi-qubit operators, studying resource requirements for approximating operator exponentials by Trotterization. We primarily focus on spin- s and truncated bosonic operators in second quantization, observing desirable properties for approaches based on the Gray code, which to our knowledge has not been used in this context previously. After outlining a methodology for implementing an arbitrary encoding, we investigate the interplay between Hamming distances, sparsity patterns, bosonic truncation, and other properties of local operators. Finally, we obtain resource counts for five common Hamiltonian classes used in physics and chemistry, while modeling the possibility of converting between encodings within a Trotter step. The most efficient encoding choice is heavily dependent on the application and highly sensitive to d , although clear trends are present. These operation count reductions are relevant for running algorithms on near-term quantum hardware because the savings effectively decrease the required circuit depth. Results and procedures outlined in this work may be useful for simulating a broad class of Hamiltonians on qubit-based digital quantum computers.
Abstract We simulate the time-dependent dynamics of a three-site spin chain described by the Heisenberg XXX Hamiltonian. The quantum circuit representing the time-dependent wave function is constructed using the Suzuki-Trotter approximation, and is executed on the quantum computer ibm_kawasaki. At each time step, the density matrix of the three-qubit state is reconstructed by state tomography. By applying four different mitigation methods, Clifford data regression, Pauli twirling, density matrix purification, and density matrix orthogonalization, we demonstrate that accurate time-dependent populations and density matrices can be calculated on noisy superconducting-qubit type quantum computers.
Due to the limitations of present-day quantum hardware, it is especially critical to design algorithms that make the best possible use of available resources. When simulating quantum many-body systems on a quantum computer, straightforward encodings that transform many-body Hamiltonians into qubit Hamiltonians use NNN of the available basis states of an NNN-qubit system, whereas 2N{2}^{N}2N are in theory available. We explore an efficient encoding that uses the entire set of basis states, where terms in the Hamiltonian are mapped to qubit operators with a Hamiltonian that acts on the basis states in Gray code order. This encoding is applied to the commonly studied problem of finding the ground-state energy of a deuteron with a simulated variational quantum eigensolver (VQE). It is compared to a standard ``one-hot'' encoding, and various trade-offs that arise are analyzed. The energy distribution of VQE solutions has smaller variance than the one obtained by the one-hot encoding even in the presence of simulated hardware noise, despite an increase in the number of measurements. The reduced number of qubits and a shorter-depth variational Ansatz enables the encoding of larger problems on current-generation machines. This encoding also demonstrates improvements for simulating time evolution of the same system, producing circuits for the evolution operators with reduced depth and roughly half the number of gates compared to a one-hot encoding.
We investigate the quantum computing of the vibrational dynamics of CO2_22​ and H2_22​O by constructing the vibrational third-order anharmonic Hamiltonian in qubit and qudit form by two types of qubit encodings (binary and direct) and a qudit encoding. We simulate the time-dependent vibrational population transfer using the three different encodings, including the effect of noise and find that the qudit encoding leads to the most accurate results both for CO2_22​ and H2_22​O because of the small number of terms in the qudit Hamiltonian as long as the same values of the entangling gate error rates are adopted. Although the entangling gate errors of current qudit quantum computers are approximately one order of magnitude larger than the entangling gate errors of current qubit quantum computers, our results suggest that the simulation of vibrational dynamics is a promising application for future qudit quantum computers.
Model Hamiltonians described by fermionic operators are ubiquitous in physics and chemistry, but the quantum simulation of their properties is challenging on near-term quantum computers. Indeed, for any problem with more than two connected neighbors, standard mappings of fermions on qubits lead to many-body operators whose size increases with the size of the problem, quickly making the simulation unfeasible on noisy devices. Here we consider an alternative mapping based on qudits and the auxiliary fermion method, which leads to a significant reduction in the circuit depth and in the number of computational units to be controlled. These advantages increase for highly connected target Hamiltonians, such as lattices with long-range interactions or the molecular systems investigated in quantum chemistry. We numerically test our approach on qudits encoded in molecular spins, by performing the quantum simulation of a fermionic model on a small cluster. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
The paradigm behind digital quantum computing inherits the idea of using binary information processing. Nature in fact gives much more rich structures of physical objects that can be used for encoding information, which is especially interesting in the quantum-mechanical domain. In this Colloquium several ideas are reviewed that indicate how multilevel quantum systems, also known as qudits, can be used for efficient realization of quantum algorithms, which are represented via standard qubit circuits. The focus in the Colloquium is on techniques for leveraging qudits for simplifying decomposition of multiqubit gates and for compressing quantum information by encoding multiple qubits in a single qudit. As discussed in the Colloquium, these approaches can be efficiently combined. This allows a reduction in the number of entangling (two-body) operations and the number of quantum information carriers used compared to straightforward qubit realizations. These theoretical schemes can be implemented with quantum computing platforms of various natures, such as trapped ions, neutral atoms, superconducting junctions, quantum light, spin systems, and molecules. The Colloquium concludes by summarizing a set of open problems whose resolution will be an important further step toward employing universal qudit-based processors for running qubit algorithms.