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arXiv:2607.18404

Reducing entanglement with a Hamiltonian derived Clifford transformation

James Brown, Erika Lloyd, Alexandre Fleury, Tarini S Hardikar, Kenny Heitritter

quant-phSubmitted Jul 20, 2026• Announced Jul 22, 2026• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Recently (Physica Scripta, 100(10):105401, 2025), an algorithm was introduced that deterministically generates a Clifford transformation from the Qubit Coupled Cluster (QCC) algorithm which we call Q-Cliff (QCC+Clifford). There, it was shown that Q-Cliff could be utilized to generate a hardware efficient version of the QCC ansatz. Here, we examine and refine these techniques and show that Q-Cliff can be utilized to generate efficient classical and quantum approximations to the ground states of chemical systems. The algorithm generates an efficient variational method that generally has accuracy between MP2 and CISD with $O(N^6)$. Furthermore, we show through DMRG calculations that the entanglement between qubits is reduced significantly and therefore the accuracy for a given bond dimension can be vastly improved (up to an order of magnitude). Finally, we refine the previously reported algorithm to generate low-depth and CNOT efficient circuits that can be optimized with a comparable number of energy evaluations to state-of-the-art VQE algorithms. All these results show that this Hamiltonian derived Clifford transformation should be a tool used for many classical and quantum algorithms.

Comments
11 pages, 4 figures

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Achieving chemical accuracy with shallow quantum circuits is a significant challenge in quantum computational chemistry, particularly for near-term quantum devices. In this work, we present a Clifford-based Hamiltonian engineering algorithm, namely CHEM, that addresses the trade-off between circuit depth and accuracy. Based on a variational quantum eigensolver and hardware-efficient ansatz, our method designs the Clifford-based Hamiltonian transformation that (1) ensures a set of initial circuit parameters corresponding to the Hartree–Fock energy can be generated, (2) effectively maximizes the initial energy gradient with respect to circuit parameters, (3) imposes negligible overhead for classical processing and does not require additional quantum resources, and (4) is compatible with any circuit topology. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach using a quantum hardware emulator, achieving chemical accuracy for systems as large as 12 qubits with fewer than 30 two-qubit gates. Our Clifford-based Hamiltonian engineering approach offers a promising avenue for practical quantum computational chemistry on near-term quantum devices.
Abstract The performance of quantum algorithms for ground-state energy estimation is directly impacted by the quality of the initial state, where quality is traditionally defined in terms of the overlap of the input state with the target state. An ideal state preparation protocol can be characterized by being easily generated classically and can be transformed to a quantum circuit with minimal overhead while having a significant overlap with the targeted eigenstate of a given Hamiltonian. We propose a method that meets these requirements by introducing a variant of the iterative qubit coupled cluster (iQCC) approach, which exclusively uses Clifford circuits. These circuits can be efficiently simulated on a classical computer, with polynomial scaling according to the Gottesman–Knill theorem. Since the iQCC method has been developed as a quantum algorithm firstly, our variant can be mapped naturally to quantum hardware. We additionally implemented several optimizations to the algorithm enhancing its scalability. We demonstrate the algorithm’s correctness in ground-state simulations for small molecules such as H2, LiH, and H2O, and extend our study to complex systems like the titanium-based compound Ti(C5H5)(CH3)3 with a (20, 20) active space, requiring 40 qubits. Results show that the convergence of the algorithm is well-behaved, and the ground state can be represented accurately. Moreover, we show an automated workflow for restricting the qubit active space, thus relieving computational resources by considering only qubits affected by non-trivial operations.
A unitary coupled cluster (UCC) form for the wave function in the variational quantum eigensolver has been suggested as a systematic way to go beyond the mean-field approximation and include electron correlation in solving quantum chemistry problems on a quantum computer. Although being exact in the limit of including all possible coupled cluster excitations, practically, the accuracy of this approach depends on the number and type of terms are included in the wave function parametrization. Another difficulty of UCC is a growth of the number of simultaneously entangled qubits even at the fixed Fermionic excitation rank. Not all quantum computing architectures can cope with this growth. To address both problems, we introduce a qubit coupled cluster (QCC) method that starts directly in the qubit space and uses energy response estimates for ranking the importance of individual entanglers for the variational energy minimization. Also, we provide an exact factorization of a unitary rotation of more than two qubits to a product of two-qubit unitary rotations. Thus, the QCC method with the factorization technique can be limited to only two-qubit entanglement gates and allows for very efficient use of quantum resources in terms of the number of coupled cluster operators. The method performance is illustrated by calculating ground-state potential energy curves of H 2 and LiH molecules with chemical accuracy, ≤1 kcal/mol, and a symmetric water dissociation curve.