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arXiv:2604.08466

Time evolution of impurity models and their universality for quantum computation

N. C. Mai Pham, Raul A. Santos

quant-phSubmitted Apr 9, 2026• Announced Apr 10, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Impurity Hamiltonians are systems of $N$ fermionic modes where $O(1)$ of them interact among themselves via quartic (or higher order) fermion terms, while coupling quadratically with $O(N)$ bath modes. Without the quartic interactions, these systems are classically simulable with $O(N^3)$ resources. It was proved that the time-dependent evolution of these systems can perform universal quantum computation. The question of whether or not this remains true for time-independent evolution remains open. Here, we prove that the time evolution of generic time-independent impurity Hamiltonians on $O(N)$ qubits is universal on $N$ qubits if the input state is a product state of fermions in any single particle basis. In our proof we find that for a computation of depth $S$, the size of the impurity scales as $O(S\log S)$.

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14 pages, 2 figures

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Impurity Hamiltonians are systems of NNN fermionic modes where O(1)O(1)O(1) of them interact among themselves via quartic (or higher order) fermion terms, while coupling quadratically with O(N)O(N)O(N) bath modes. Without the quartic interactions, these systems are classically simulable with O(N3)O(N^3)O(N3) resources. It was proved that the time-dependent evolution of these systems can perform universal quantum computation. The question of whether or not this remains true for time-independent evolution remains open. Here, we prove that the time evolution of generic time-independent impurity Hamiltonians on O(N)O(N)O(N) qubits is universal on NNN qubits if the input state is a product state of fermions in any single particle basis. In our proof we find that for a computation of depth SSS, the size of the impurity scales as O(Slog⁡S)O(S\log S)O(SlogS).
A quantum impurity model describes a small interacting subsystem embedded into a large bath of free fermions. Here we study the computational complexity of calculating the ground energy, thermal equilibrium, and dynamical properties of these models. Our work reveals a sharp contrast: equilibrium properties can be efficiently approximated by classical means, whereas time evolution can implement a universal quantum computation. More precisely, let HHH be the Hamiltonian of an impurity model with nnn fermionic modes and a constant-size impurity. We show that: (1) the ground energy of HHH can be approximated to additive error ε\varepsilonε by a classical algorithm with runtime poly(n,1/ε)\textsf{poly}(n,1/\varepsilon)poly(n,1/ε), improving on the quasi-polynomial runtime of the best previously known algorithm; (2) at inverse temperature βββ, the Helmholtz free energy and a classical description of the thermofield double state can be computed to precision ε\varepsilonε in time poly(n,β,1/ε)\textsf{poly}(n,β,1/\varepsilon)poly(n,β,1/ε); (3) simulating the time evolution e−iHte^{-iHt}e−iHt is BQP\textsf{BQP}BQP-complete, for HHH that is time-independent and has a fixed, constant impurity size. Our algorithms exploit exponential suppression of multi-particle bath excitations in a basis organized by energy scale and Krylov depth. Our universality construction realizes a stationary quantum processor whose program arrives in a stream of freely propagating fermions.
Quantum impurity models are paradigmatic models of interacting quantum matter, as well as key computational primitives for modern electronic-structure methods. They describe a small subsystem of interacting fermions coupled to a large, noninteracting bath. We perform a comprehensive study of the computational complexity of simulating impurity models, delineating the boundary between classical and quantum tractability for this class of problems. Our main finding is that static properties of quantum impurity models can be calculated efficiently on a classical computer. Specifically, we give classical algorithms that (1) estimate the ground-state energy to additive precision δδδ in time poly(n,δ−1)\mathrm{poly}(n,δ^{-1})poly(n,δ−1), and (2) estimate the partition function at inverse temperature βββ to relative precision δδδ in time poly(n,β,δ−1)\mathrm{poly}(n,β,δ^{-1})poly(n,β,δ−1), where nnn is the system size. These results improve the previous best-known complexity for ground-state energy estimation from quasipolynomial to polynomial time, while establishing for the first time rigorous polynomial-time guarantees for simulating impurity models in thermal equilibrium. On the other hand, we find that simulating dynamical properties of impurity models is hard for classical computers but easy on a quantum computer. As a canonical example, we show that computing their nonequilibrium Green's functions captures the full power of quantum computation, even at finite temperature. Taken together, our results rule out superpolynomial quantum speedups for computing static properties, but provide an avenue for quantum advantage in simulating impurity physics out of equilibrium.
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We introduce an efficient method to simulate the dynamics of an interacting quantum impurity coupled to noninteracting fermionic reservoirs. Viewing the impurity as an open quantum system, we describe the reservoirs by their Feynman-Vernon influence functionals (IFs). The IFs are represented as matrix-product states in the temporal domain, which enables an efficient computation of the dynamics for arbitrary interactions. We apply our method to study quantum quenches and transport in an Anderson impurity model, including highly nonequilibrium setups, and find a favorable performance compared to state-of-the-art methods. The computational resources required for an accurate computation of the dynamics scale polynomially with evolution time, indicating that a broad class of out-of-equilibrium quantum impurity problems are efficiently solvable. This approach will provide additional insights into the dynamical properties of mesoscopic devices and correlated materials.
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Efficient simulation of interacting fermionic systems is a key application of near-term quantum computers, but is hindered by the overhead required to encode fermionic operators on qubit hardware. Here, we consider models with NNN fermionic modes in which each participates in at most a constant number ddd of interactions and study the circuit depth required to implement the Trotterized time evolution on qubit hardware with all-to-all connectivity. We introduce an encoding that augments each physical fermionic mode with a small number of auxiliary fermions, enabling the removal of Jordan--Wigner strings. Although the preparation of the auxiliary fermion state incurs an initial overhead, this state remains invariant under time evolution. As a result, long-time evolution can be implemented with asymptotically optimal circuit depth, reducing a previously multiplicative O(log⁡N)O(\log N)O(logN) overhead to an additive overhead. Our results thus establish that the simulation of sparse fermionic models on qubit hardware matches the performance achievable on ideal fermionic hardware up to constant factors and O(dN)O(dN)O(dN) ancillary qubits.