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arXiv:2603.23444

Scalable quantum circuit generation for iterative ground state approximation using Majorana Propagation

Rahul Chakraborty, Aaron Miller, Anton Nykänen, Özlem Salehi, Fabio Tarocco, Fabijan Pavošević, Pi. A. B. Haase, Martina Stella, Adam Glos

quant-phSubmitted Mar 24, 2026• Announced Mar 25, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

We introduce the Adaptive Derivative-Assembled Pseudo-Trotter ansatz Variational Majorana Propagation Eigensolver (ADAPT-VMPE), a quantum-inspired classical algorithm that exploits Majorana Propagation (MP) to produce circuits for approximating the ground state of molecular Hamiltonians. Equipped with the theoretical guarantees of MP, which provide controllable bounds on the approximation error, ADAPT-VMPE offers an efficient and scalable approach for iterative ansatz construction. A theoretical analysis of the computational complexity demonstrates that it is polynomial in both the number of qubits and the number of iterations. We present an in-depth analysis of circuit construction strategies, analyzing their impact on convergence and provide practical guidance for efficient ansatz generation. Using ADAPT-VMPE, we construct up to 100-qubit ansätze for a strongly correlated photosensitizer currently undergoing human clinical trials for cancer treatment. Our results demonstrate that constant overlap with the ground state across system sizes can be reached in polynomial time with polynomially sized circuits.

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We introduce the Adaptive Derivative-Assembled Pseudo-Trotter ansatz Variational Majorana Propagation Eigensolver (ADAPT-VMPE), a quantum-inspired classical algorithm that exploits Majorana Propagation (MP) to produce circuits for approximating the ground state of molecular Hamiltonians. Equipped with the theoretical guarantees of MP, which provide controllable bounds on the approximation error, ADAPT-VMPE offers an efficient and scalable approach for iterative ansatz construction. A theoretical analysis of the computational complexity demonstrates that it is polynomial in both the number of qubits and the number of iterations. We present an in-depth analysis of circuit construction strategies, analyzing their impact on convergence and provide practical guidance for efficient ansatz generation. Using ADAPT-VMPE, we construct up to 100-qubit ansätze for a strongly correlated photosensitizer currently undergoing human clinical trials for cancer treatment. Our results demonstrate that constant overlap with the ground state across system sizes can be reached in polynomial time with polynomially sized circuits.
Designing compact ansätze in Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) is crucial for solving energetic problems of practical molecules on near-term quantum devices. However, existing Adaptive Derivative-Assembled Pseudo-Trotter (ADAPT) ansätze face two challenges: improper operator selection and accumulation of degraded operators. In this paper, we propose the Hamiltonian-Aware (HA) ADAPT-VQE algorithm to address these issues. First, we establish a novel excitation operator selection criterion. It breaks the local constraint of existing criteria by incorporating Hamiltonian information, prioritizes physically meaningful excitation operators, and incurs no extra classical or quantum computational overhead. Furthermore, we develop a problem-adaptive method for discriminating and pruning redundant excitation operators stemming from improper selection and inevitable degradation. This method balances redundant operator pruning and convergence guarantee, and is applicable to ansätze with arbitrary scales. Systematic numerical experiments on typical strongly correlated molecular systems demonstrate that our HA-ADAPT-VQE avoids energy plateaus and outperforms baseline algorithms in terms of energy error, ansatz size, and measurement cost. This work offers an efficient, robust ansatz construction paradigm, facilitating the development and practical deployment of large-scale VQE in quantum chemistry.
Compact ground-state preparation circuits are essential for early fault-tolerant quantum chemistry. We introduce Variational Imaginary-time Majorana Evolution (VIME), a classical pre-training algorithm that extends operator-projected variational quantum imaginary-time evolution (OVQITE) to molecular electronic structure using a single compiled Majorana-propagation (MP) surrogate graph. We pair VIME with a compressed tiled Unitary Product State (c-tUPS) ansatz that we develop to reduce both classical simulation and quantum state-preparation costs. In the strongly correlated ruthenium complex TLD-1411, active-space calculations requiring up to 52 qubits achieve chemical precision against DMRG reference energies, with energy errors approximately 400×400\times400× smaller than those from ADAPT-VQE-based variational Majorana-propagation (ADAPT-VMPE). Across the strongly multireference acene series up to heptacene (60 qubits), VIME matches or improves on the MP-reported energy accuracy of the ADAPT-VMPE comparison points with up to 26×26\times26× fewer CNOTs and 167×167\times167× lower two-qubit depth. These results establish imaginary-time classical pre-training of compressed variational ansätze as a promising route to resource-efficient molecular ground-state preparation.
The adaptive derivative-assembled pseudo-trotter (ADAPT) variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) is an appealing framework for iteratively constructing accurate representations of ground- and excited-state wave functions as products of exponentialized one- and two-body operators acting on a reference state. In this work, we propose a CNOT-efficient circuit for implementing exponentialized two-body qubit-excitation-based (QEB) operators, enabling the construction of the low-depth wave function Ansätze. Our proposed circuit architecture employs a 2-qubit-controlled rotation gate flanked by two layers of CNOT gates, requiring only 9 CNOT gates per two-body QEB operator while preserving essential symmetries, including particle number and the Z -component of spin. By integrating these optimized circuits into the ADAPT–VQE framework, we achieve a reduction in circuit depth of approximately 28% compared to the original QEB ADAPT–VQE method, without sacrificing accuracy in simulating ground- and excited-state properties of small molecules. Numerical simulations validate the improved performance of our approach, demonstrating its potential as an efficient tool for quantum simulations of electronic structures.
The adaptive derivative-assembled pseudo-trotter variational quantum eigensolver (ADAPT-VQE) is a promising hybrid quantum-classical algorithm for molecular ground state energy calculation, yet its practical scalability is hampered by redundant excitation operators and excessive measurement costs. To address these challenges, we propose Param-ADAPT-VQE, a novel improved algorithm that selects excitation operators based on a parameter-based criterion instead of the traditional gradient-based metric. This strategy effectively eludes redundant operators. We further develop a sub-Hamiltonian technique and integrate a hot-start VQE optimization strategy, achieving a significant reduction in measurement costs. Numerical experiments on typical molecular systems demonstrate that Param-ADAPT-VQE outperforms the original ADAPT-VQE in computational accuracy, ansatz size, and measurement costs. Furthermore, our scheme retains the fundamental framework of ADAPT-VQE and is thus fully compatible with its various modified versions, enabling further performance improvements in specific aspects. This work presents an efficient and scalable enhancement to ADAPT-VQE, mitigating the core obstacles that impede its practical implementation in the field of molecular quantum chemistry.
Materials design stands to be one of the most promising applications of quantum computing. However, the presence of noise in near-term quantum devices restricts quantum simulations of materials to shallow circuits. In this work, we present circuit-efficient variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) simulations of periodic materials using qubit-encoded wave functions based on Adaptive Derivative-Assembled Pseudo-Trotter (ADAPT) VQE. To iteratively construct accurate wave functions for periodic systems, we introduce operator pools comprising a complete set of anti-Hermitian one- and two-body qubit excitation/flipping operators. Numerical results demonstrate that these qubit-encoded algorithms can accurately predict the ground-state energy of periodic systems while significantly reducing circuit depth compared to Fermion-encoded algorithms. Additionally, we integrate the variance extrapolation technique with ADAPT-VQE algorithms to enhance the accuracy of ground-state energy estimations. This strategy further reduces the required circuit depth, enabling scalable and precise simulations of periodic systems.
By design, the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) strives to recover the lowest-energy eigenvalue of a given Hamiltonian by preparing quantum states guided by the variational principle. In practice, the prepared quantum state is indirectly assessed by the value of the associated energy. Novel adaptive derivative-assembled pseudo-trotter (ADAPT) ansatz approaches and recent formal advances now establish a clear connection between the theory of quantum chemistry and the quantum state ansatz used to solve the electronic structure problem. Here we benchmark the accuracy of VQE and ADAPT-VQE to calculate the electronic ground states and potential energy curves for a few selected diatomic molecules, namely H2, NaH, and KH. Using numerical simulation, we find both methods provide good estimates of the energy and ground state, but only ADAPT-VQE proves to be robust to particularities in optimization methods. Another relevant finding is that gradient-based optimization is overall more economical and delivers superior performance than analogous simulations carried out with gradient-free optimizers. The results also identify small errors in the prepared state fidelity which show an increasing trend with molecular size.