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arXiv:2610.01190

Rapid mixing of quantum spin chains at any finite temperature

Leeseok Kim

quant-phcond-mat.stat-mechmath-phSubmitted Oct 1, 2026• Announced Oct 2, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

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 $\mathcal{O}\left(\log (n/\varepsilon)\right)$ 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 $1$. We further provide $\mathcal{O}(\text{polylog}(n/\varepsilon))$ depth of quantum circuits to prepare these Gibbs states. We hope these techniques will facilitate the analysis and design of other Gibbs samplers.

Related papers

Rapid mixing of Gibbs samplers via quantum Dobrushin--Shlosman conditions

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Classical Dobrushin--Shlosman theory uses heat-bath block updates to identify sharp temperature thresholds for establishing the rapid mixing of Gibbs samplers. In particular, these mixing guarantees often hold even when stricter single-site conditions fail. We extend this approach to noncommuting quantum lattice systems through a quantum Dobrushin--Shlosman condition for finite-block dynamics, which we call smoothed heat-bath dynamics. We establish this condition in two regimes. For finite-range quantum spin chains at every fixed finite temperature, we prove logarithmic trace-norm mixing in system size, with normalized bounds uniform in on-site fields and single exponential in inverse temperature. We also prove stability under small local perturbations of interacting, possibly noncommuting reference Hamiltonians on graphs of polynomial volume growth. For classical references with bounded local interactions, uniform strong spatial mixing implies our quantum condition. With bounded local terms and fixed physical, geometric and block parameters, the resulting samplers prepare Gibbs states to trace-norm error $\varepsilon$ using $N\operatorname{polylog}(N/\varepsilon)$ gates and classical operations. Our block updates combine a local Gibbs reset with quantum belief propagation to incorporate interactions across the block boundary, yielding exactly Gibbs-preserving, KMS-reversible channels. Two independently tunable parameters control contraction: an internal evolution time suppresses the influence of sites inside a block, while the block size allows interior contraction to dominate boundary influence. This finite-time relaxation has no counterpart in a classical heat-bath block update.

quant-pharXiv:2610.03578•Oct 5, 2026•0 citations

Spectral Analysis Beyond the Spectral Gap: Rapid Mixing of Quantum Gibbs Samplers in One Dimension

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One-dimensional quantum Gibbs states in constant circuit depth

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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.

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Slow Mixing of Quantum Gibbs Samplers

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Fast Mixing of Quantum Spin Chains at All Temperatures

Thiago Bergamaschi, Chi-Fang Chen

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].

arXiv:2510.08533•ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC)•Jun 9, 2026•1 citation
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.
Classical Dobrushin--Shlosman theory uses heat-bath block updates to identify sharp temperature thresholds for establishing the rapid mixing of Gibbs samplers. In particular, these mixing guarantees often hold even when stricter single-site conditions fail. We extend this approach to noncommuting quantum lattice systems through a quantum Dobrushin--Shlosman condition for finite-block dynamics, which we call smoothed heat-bath dynamics. We establish this condition in two regimes. For finite-range quantum spin chains at every fixed finite temperature, we prove logarithmic trace-norm mixing in system size, with normalized bounds uniform in on-site fields and single exponential in inverse temperature. We also prove stability under small local perturbations of interacting, possibly noncommuting reference Hamiltonians on graphs of polynomial volume growth. For classical references with bounded local interactions, uniform strong spatial mixing implies our quantum condition. With bounded local terms and fixed physical, geometric and block parameters, the resulting samplers prepare Gibbs states to trace-norm error ε\varepsilonε using Npolylog⁡(N/ε)N\operatorname{polylog}(N/\varepsilon)Npolylog(N/ε) gates and classical operations. Our block updates combine a local Gibbs reset with quantum belief propagation to incorporate interactions across the block boundary, yielding exactly Gibbs-preserving, KMS-reversible channels. Two independently tunable parameters control contraction: an internal evolution time suppresses the influence of sites inside a block, while the block size allows interior contraction to dominate boundary influence. This finite-time relaxation has no counterpart in a classical heat-bath block update.
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 thermal (Gibbs) states is a common task in physics and computer science. Recent algorithms mimic cooling via system-bath coupling, where the cost is determined by mixing time, akin to classical Metropolis-like algorithms. However, few methods exist to demonstrate slow mixing in quantum systems, unlike the well-established classical tools for systems like the Ising model and constraint satisfaction problems. We present a quantum generalization of these tools through a generic bottleneck lemma that implies slow mixing in quantum systems. This lemma focuses on quantum measures of distance, analogous to the classical Hamming distance but rooted in uniquely quantum principles and quantified either through Bohr spectrum jumps or operator locality. Using our bottleneck lemma, we establish unconditional lower bounds on the mixing times of Gibbs samplers for several families of Hamiltonians at low temperatures. For classical Hamiltonians with mixing time lower bounds Tmix=exp⁡[Ω(nα)]T_\mathrm{mix} = \exp[Ω(n^α)]Tmix​=exp[Ω(nα)], we prove that quantum Gibbs samplers also have Tmix=exp⁡[Ω(nα)]T_\mathrm{mix} = \exp[Ω(n^α)]Tmix​=exp[Ω(nα)]. This applies to models like random KKK-SAT instances and spin glasses. For stabilizer Hamiltonians, we provide a concise proof of exponential lower bounds Tmix=exp⁡[Ω(n)]T_\mathrm{mix} = \exp[Ω(n)]Tmix​=exp[Ω(n)] on mixing times of good nnn-qubit stabilizer codes at low constant temperature. Finally, we consider constant-degree classical Hamiltonians and show how to lift classical slow mixing results in the presence of a transverse field using Poisson Feynman-Kac techniques. We show generic results for models with linear free energy barriers, and we demonstrate that our techniques extend to models with sublinear free energy barriers by proving Tmix=exp⁡[n1/2−o(1)]T_\mathrm{mix} = \exp[n^{1/2-o(1)}]Tmix​=exp[n1/2−o(1)] for the ferromagnetic 2D transverse field Ising model.
Understanding when quantum many-body systems rapidly converge to thermal equilibrium is a central problem in quantum statistical mechanics. While spatial locality provides powerful tools for systems with an underlying geometry, fully connected models require estimates that accommodate interactions between every pair of spins. We study Gibbs-state preparation for two-local quantum Hamiltonians on arbitrary interaction graphs, including fully connected systems, via Lindblad dynamics that satisfies Kubo--Martin--Schwinger (KMS) detailed balance. Our approach is based on a quantum analogue of the classical Dobrushin condition, which controls the influence of local perturbations on the rest of the system. Using the quantum Wasserstein distance of order 111, we quantify how these perturbations propagate under the dynamics and derive contraction estimates in a high-temperature regime controlled by the maximum total interaction strength per site. These estimates require no assumptions on spatial geometry or graph growth and yield mixing times logarithmic in the system size and the inverse error tolerance, uniformly over all initial states.