Dissipative algorithms approach the problem of ground state preparation by mimicking the natural thermalization of a quantum system in contact with a large, low-temperature thermal environment. The environment can be efficiently simulated by a single ancilla qubit with a variable energy gap that is repeatedly coupled to the system qubits to generate a dissipative channel, and then reset after each interaction. Here we present an adaptive implementation of the dissipative algorithm, RL-Adapt, that uses single-shot reinforcement learning to optimize the selection of ancilla frequency and system-bath interaction operator to maximize energy dissipation without relying on a priori knowledge of the system spectrum. The adaptive implementation results in significantly reduced convergence times and can successfully find the ground state even for non-ideal operator pools that fail to converge using non-adaptive, uniform random operator and ancilla frequency selection.
Dissipative algorithms approach the problem of ground state preparation by mimicking the natural thermalization of a quantum system in contact with a large, low-temperature thermal environment. The environment can be efficiently simulated by a single ancilla qubit with a variable energy gap that is repeatedly coupled to the system qubits to generate a dissipative channel, and then reset after each interaction. Here we present an adaptive implementation of the dissipative algorithm, RL-Adapt, that uses single-shot reinforcement learning to optimize the selection of ancilla frequency and system-bath interaction operator to maximize energy dissipation without relying on a priori knowledge of the system spectrum. The adaptive implementation results in significantly reduced convergence times and can successfully find the ground state even for non-ideal operator pools that fail to converge using non-adaptive, uniform random operator and ancilla frequency selection.
Dissipation engineering has attracted growing interest as an approach to controlling open quantum systems through engineered system-environment interactions. Standard variational quantum circuits are usually built from unitary operations and therefore explore only a restricted family of states. To go beyond this limitation, we introduce a variational dissipative framework in which ancilla-assisted engineered dissipation is incorporated into parameterized quantum algorithms. In this framework, system-only variational layers are combined with trainable dissipative modules, so that the circuit can prepare a broader class of mixed states through ancilla-assisted nonunitary transformations. Within this framework, the same ancilla-assisted dissipative block is used in two representative settings with different objectives. For ground-state search, it is integrated into a dissipative variational quantum eigensolver to improve the convergence toward low-energy states. For state recovery, it is trained as a recovery channel to suppress preparation noise and enhance fidelity with the target state. In both cases, the block is realized through parameterized system-ancilla couplings followed by ancilla reset and trace-out. Our results show that engineered dissipation can be incorporated into variational quantum circuits as a reusable trainable primitive rather than treated only as a source of noise. In this sense, the proposed framework identifies ancilla-assisted dissipative channels as a concrete variational resource that can support both optimization and recovery tasks within a unified design.
Thermal state preparation is a central challenge in the simulation of quantum many-body systems. Yet, provably efficient algorithms for this task were only introduced recently [Chen et al. Nature 646, 561 (2025)]. These algorithms are based on dissipative Lindbladian evolution which exactly fixes the thermal state. Controlled and efficient digital simulation of this evolution, although possible in principle, remains out of reach for present-day quantum hardware. Subsequent work has therefore focused on analog approximations of the proposed Lindbladians via `collision models' with relatively modest requirements -- a resettable bath of ancilla qubits whose couplings to the system can be tuned in time-dependent fashion -- while still admitting rigorous fixed-point error bounds. Existing rigorous approaches, however, do not exploit the fact that these constructions generically implement not only the desired Lindblad dynamics, but also an additional unitary evolution generated by the system Hamiltonian which may aid convergence to the thermal state [Lloyd and Abanin arXiv:2506.21318 (2025)]. Here, we show that this unitary contribution does indeed tighten the fixed-point error bound and demonstrate that it is rigorously controlled by the system-bath coupling strength J, scaling as J2. This demonstrates that the effect of the spurious `Lamb shift' term generated by the system-bath interaction can be controlled by tuning J. We clarify the role, previously observed, of a randomized implementation in suppressing possible resonances of the drive with the many-body spectrum, and bound the additional variance that this randomization imposes on observables. Finally, we numerically study aspects of the protocol which are relevant for its practical realization, such as the mixing time.
Due to the large state space of the two-qubit system, and the adoption of ladder reward function in the existing quantum state preparation methods, the convergence speed is slow and it is difficult to prepare the desired target quantum state with high fidelity under limited conditions. To solve the above problems, a difference-driven reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm for quantum state preparation of two-qubit system is proposed by improving the reward function and action selection strategy. Firstly, a model is constructed for the problem of preparing quantum states of a two-qubit system, with restrictions on the type of quantum gates and the time for quantum state evolution. In the preparation process, a weighted differential dynamic reward function is designed to assist the algorithm quickly obtain the maximum expected cumulative reward. Then, an adaptive [Formula: see text]-greedy action selection strategy is adopted to achieve a balance between exploration and utilization to a certain extent, thereby improving the fidelity of the final quantum state. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can prepare quantum state with high fidelity under limited conditions. Compared with other algorithms, it has different degrees of improvement in convergence speed and fidelity of the final quantum state.
In recent years, variational quantum algorithms have gained significant attention due to their adaptability and efficiency on near-term quantum hardware. They have shown potential in a variety of tasks, including linear algebra, search problems, Gibbs, and ground state preparation. Nevertheless, the presence of noise in current day quantum hardware severely limits their performance. In this work, we introduce dissipative variational quantum algorithms (D-VQAs) by incorporating dissipative operations, such as qubit RESET and stochastic gates, as an intrinsic part of a variational quantum circuit. We argue that such dissipative variational algorithms possess some natural resilience to dissipative noise. We demonstrate how such algorithms can prepare Gibbs states over a wide range of quantum many-body Hamiltonians and temperatures, while significantly reducing errors due to both coherent and noncoherent noise. An additional advantage of our approach is that no ancilla qubits are need. Our results highlight the potential of D-VQAs to enhance the robustness and accuracy of variational quantum computations on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices.
Dissipative algorithms for preparing thermal and ground states typically require a total Hamiltonian simulation time that grows at least linearly with system size N, even when their mixing time grows only polylogarithmically. We achieve sublinear simulation time for free fermions by engineering local interactions with a bath whose size grows in proportion to the system size. Starting from arbitrary initial states, our thermal state preparation algorithm achieves trace-norm error ε in total simulation time O(N/ε) at fixed inverse temperature and bounded single-particle bandwidth, while ground state preparation of gapped systems requires only polylog(N/ε) time. We further establish lower bounds for thermal state preparation within the bath protocols considered, identifying two obstacles to faster preparation, namely fourth-order deviations from the target thermal state and fluctuations induced by a random frequency shared by all bath qubits. Our results demonstrate that the linear simulation time barrier in dissipative state preparation can be overcome and clarify the bath and filter-design constraints that govern further complexity improvements.
In reinforcement learning, an agent interacts sequentially with an environment to maximize a reward, receiving only partial, probabilistic feedback. This creates a fundamental exploration-exploitation trade-off: the agent must explore to learn the hidden dynamics while exploiting this knowledge to maximize its target objective. While extensively studied classically, applying this framework to quantum systems requires dealing with hidden quantum states that evolve via unknown dynamics. We formalize this problem via a framework where the environment maintains a hidden quantum memory evolving via unknown quantum channels, and the agent intervenes sequentially using quantum instruments. For this setting, we adapt an optimistic maximum-likelihood estimation algorithm. We extend the analysis to continuous action spaces, allowing us to model general positive operator-valued measures (POVMs). By controlling the propagation of estimation errors through quantum channels and instruments, we prove that the cumulative regret of our strategy scales as O(K) over K episodes. Furthermore, via a reduction to the multi-armed quantum bandit problem, we establish information-theoretic lower bounds demonstrating that this sublinear scaling is strictly optimal up to polylogarithmic factors. As a physical application, we consider state-agnostic work extraction. When extracting free energy from a sequence of non-i.i.d. quantum states correlated by a hidden memory, any lack of knowledge about the source leads to thermodynamic dissipation. In our setting, the mathematical regret exactly quantifies this cumulative dissipation. Using our adaptive algorithm, the agent uses past energy outcomes to improve its extraction protocol on the fly, achieving sublinear cumulative dissipation, and, consequently, an asymptotically zero dissipation rate.