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arXiv:2510.08533 · ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC)

Fast Mixing of Quantum Spin Chains at All Temperatures

Thiago Bergamaschi, Chi-Fang Chen

Published Jun 9, 2026• 1 citation
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Abstract

It is shown that every one-dimensional Hamiltonian with short-range interactions admits a quantum Gibbs sampler [CKG23] with a system-size independent spectral gap at all finite temperatures. Consequently, their Gibbs states can be prepared in polylogarithmic depth, and satisfy exponential clustering of correlations, generalizing [Ara69].

DOI
10.1145/3798129.3800798

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arXiv:2501.00443•PRX Quantum•Jun 2, 2025•11 citations
It is shown that every one-dimensional Hamiltonian with short-range interactions admits a quantum Gibbs sampler [CKG23] with a system-size independent spectral gap at all finite temperatures. Consequently, their Gibbs states can be prepared in polylogarithmic depth, and satisfy exponential clustering of correlations, generalizing [Ara69].
It is shown that arbitrary quantum kkk-local Hamiltonians with bounded strength interactions admit a quantum Gibbs sampler [CKG23] with a system-size independent spectral gap, at sufficiently high temperatures. As a consequence, such systems admit fully-polynomial time quantum approximation algorithms for partition functions and global expectation values.
We prove that a quasi-local quantum Gibbs sampler rapidly mixes to the Gibbs state of any 1D finite-range Hamiltonian at all finite temperatures in O(log⁡(n/ε))\mathcal{O}\left(\log (n/\varepsilon)\right)O(log(n/ε)) time. Each update traces out a contiguous block of constant length and reconstructs it using the Petz recovery map, following early proposals for quantum heat-bath Gibbs samplers by Kastoryano and Brandão~\cite{kastoryano2016quantum}. Our proof directly bounds the distance between the updated state and the target Gibbs state using quantum Wasserstein distance of order 111. We further provide O(polylog(n/ε))\mathcal{O}(\text{polylog}(n/\varepsilon))O(polylog(n/ε)) depth of quantum circuits to prepare these Gibbs states. We hope these techniques will facilitate the analysis and design of other Gibbs samplers.
We prove rapid mixing of a quantum Gibbs sampler for general one-dimensional non-commuting local spin systems at every fixed positive temperature. In particular, for a system of nnn sites, we show that the Kubo--Martin--Schwinger (KMS) detailed-balanced Gibbs sampler of~\cite{CKG2023} converges from any initial state to trace-norm error εεε in time O(log⁡4(n)+log⁡(1/ε))O(\log^4(n)+\log(1/ε))O(log4(n)+log(1/ε)). This improves the previous O(n+log⁡(1/ε))O(n+\log(1/ε))O(n+log(1/ε)) bound and establishes rapid mixing beyond high-temperature and weak-interaction regimes. Our proof explains why the slowest decay rate, captured by the spectral gap, can substantially underestimate the speed of equilibration. The key insight is that a state far from equilibrium must have a substantial component outside the span of low-weight Pauli operators, where stronger dissipation estimates apply. This yields two stages of relaxation: a double-exponential convergence from a bad initial state, followed by exponential convergence near equilibrium. We turn this mechanism into a framework for proving rapid mixing through spectral analysis beyond the gap. Our decay estimate is equivalent to exponential convergence in sandwiched Rényi-2 divergence. Together with the spectral gap, it also implies a modified logarithmic Sobolev inequality with rate Ω(log⁡−4(n))Ω(\log^{-4}(n))Ω(log−4(n)).
We prove that the Gibbs state of any spin chain can be exactly decomposed into a mixture of product states over contiguous blocks of qubits with bounded length, at any constant temperature. As a consequence, any such Gibbs state can be prepared by local unitary circuits of constant depth, with efficient classical preprocessing. We place strong limits on the spatial structure of thermal entanglement: both the entanglement depth and entanglement width (measures of multiparticle entanglement) are bounded by constants, while the localizable entanglement (the bipartite entanglement that can be generated with the aid of local measurements and classical communication) vanishes exactly beyond a constant threshold distance. Our result also has implications for quantum thermalization: for any translation-invariant spin-chain Hamiltonian with nondegenerate spectral gaps, typical low-complexity pure states drawn from a maximally entropic ensemble at any constant effective temperature become locally indistinguishable from the Gibbs state upon unitary evolution. Additionally, we obtain an analogous decomposition for fermionic systems: the Gibbs state of any 1D local fermionic Hamiltonian is exactly a mixture of constant-depth local fermionic circuits acting on Gaussian states.
Preparing Gibbs states through dissipative dynamics requires controlling convergence for the chosen Hamiltonian HHH and coupling operators. However, efficient implementation requires convergence guarantees from the spectral gap of the generator of the dynamics, which remains a crucial challenge. Recent results address the challenge by restricting the dynamics with structural assumptions about the Hamiltonian and its interactions. For the Chen-Kastoryano-Gilyen (CKG) construction and arbitrary finite-dimensional Hamiltonians, we prove an explicit comparison that converts a spectral gap estimate for the infinite-temperature generator into a lower bound on the spectral gap of the CKG quantum Gibbs sampler at every finite positive inverse temperature βββ. It allows a single spectral gap estimate at infinite temperature to certify convergence across Hamiltonians and temperatures. Such an estimate is often known from a classical spectral gap estimate, such as the classical random walk spectral gap. For Hodge Laplacians of simplicial complexes as Hamiltonians, we construct coupling operators whose generator at infinite temperature has the same spectral gap as a classical simplicial down-up walk. A positive spectral gap of the walk and bounded spectral width W=λmax⁡(H)−λmin⁡(H)W=λ_{\max}(H)-λ_{\min}(H)W=λmax​(H)−λmin​(H) give a generator spectral gap independent of the number of simplices at every fixed temperature. We then establish conditions under which the sampler approximately prepares zero-energy (harmonic) states in polynomial evolution time. This provides a conditional convergence guarantee for the state preparation in the thermal approach to quantum topological data analysis.
We study the mixing time of a recently proposed efficiently implementable Lindbladian designed to prepare the Gibbs states in the setting of weakly interacting fermionic systems. We show that at any temperature, the Lindbladian spectral gap for even parity observables is lower bounded by a constant Δ , when the interaction strength (e.g., the on-site interaction strength for the Fermi-Hubbard model) is below a constant threshold U β . Both Δ and U β are independent of the system size. This leads to a mixing time estimate that is at most linear in the system size, thus showing that the corresponding Gibbs states can be prepared efficiently on quantum computers. Our result also implies exponential decay of correlation in these Gibbs states and efficient learnability of their properties.