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Physical Review B

Nearly Optimal Measurement Scheduling for Partial Tomography of Quantum States

Xavier Bonet-Monroig, Ryan Babbush, Thomas E. O’Brien

Published Jan 1, 2020• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Many applications of quantum simulation require one to prepare and then characterize quantum states by efficiently estimating k-body reduced density matrices (k-RDMs), from which observables of interest may be obtained. For instance, the fermionic 2-RDM contains the energy, charge density, and energy gradients of an electronic system, while the qubit 2-RDM contains the spatial correlation functions of magnetic systems. Naive estimation of such RDMs requires repeated state preparations for each matrix element, which makes for prohibitively large computation times. However, commuting matrix elements may be measured simultaneously, allowing for a significant cost reduction. In this work, we design schemes for such a parallelization with near-optimal complexity in the system size N. We first describe a scheme to sample all elements of a qubit k-RDM using only O(3klogk-1N) unique measurement circuits, an exponential improvement over prior art. We then describe a scheme for sampling all elements of the fermionic 2-RDM using only O(N2) unique measurement circuits, each of which requires only a local O(N)-depth measurement circuit. We prove a lower bound of ω(ϵ-2Nk) on the number of state preparations, Clifford circuits, and measurement in the computational basis required to estimate all elements of a fermionic k-RDM, making our scheme for sampling the fermionic 2-RDM asymptotically optimal. We finally construct circuits to sample the expectation value of a linear combination of ω anticommuting two-body fermionic operators with only O(ω) gates on a linear array. These circuits allows for sampling any linear combination of fermionic 2-RDM elements in O(N4/ω) time, with a significantly lower measurement circuit complexity than prior art. Our results improve the viability of near-term quantum simulation of molecules and strongly correlated material systems.

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Nearly Optimal Measurement Scheduling for Partial Tomography of Quantum States

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Many applications of quantum simulation require one to prepare and then characterize quantum states by efficiently estimating k-body reduced density matrices (k-RDMs), from which observables of interest may be obtained. For instance, the fermionic 2-RDM contains the energy, charge density, and energy gradients of an electronic system, while the qubit 2-RDM contains the spatial correlation functions of magnetic systems. Naive estimation of such RDMs requires repeated state preparations for each matrix element, which makes for prohibitively large computation times. However, commuting matrix elements may be measured simultaneously, allowing for a significant cost reduction. In this work, we design schemes for such a parallelization with near-optimal complexity in the system size N. We first describe a scheme to sample all elements of a qubit k-RDM using only O(3klogk-1N) unique measurement circuits, an exponential improvement over prior art. We then describe a scheme for sampling all elements of the fermionic 2-RDM using only O(N2) unique measurement circuits, each of which requires only a local O(N)-depth measurement circuit. We prove a lower bound of ω(ϵ-2Nk) on the number of state preparations, Clifford circuits, and measurement in the computational basis required to estimate all elements of a fermionic k-RDM, making our scheme for sampling the fermionic 2-RDM asymptotically optimal. We finally construct circuits to sample the expectation value of a linear combination of ω anticommuting two-body fermionic operators with only O(ω) gates on a linear array. These circuits allows for sampling any linear combination of fermionic 2-RDM elements in O(N4/ω) time, with a significantly lower measurement circuit complexity than prior art. Our results improve the viability of near-term quantum simulation of molecules and strongly correlated material systems.
Many applications of quantum simulation require to prepare and then characterize quantum states by performing an efficient partial tomography to estimate observables corresponding to kkk-body reduced density matrices (kkk-RDMs). For instance, variational algorithms for the quantum simulation of chemistry usually require that one measure the fermionic 2-RDM. While such marginals provide a tractable description of quantum states from which many important properties can be computed, their determination often requires a prohibitively large number of circuit repetitions. Here we describe a method by which all elements of kkk-body qubit RDMs acting on NNN qubits can be directly measured with a number of circuits scaling as O(3klog⁡k−1 ⁣N){\cal O}(3^{k} \log^{k-1}\! N)O(3klogk−1N), an exponential improvement in NNN over prior art. Next, we show that if one is able to implement a linear depth circuit on a linear array prior to measurement, then one can directly measure all elements of the fermionic 2-RDM using only O(N2){\cal O}(N^2)O(N2) circuits. We prove that this result is asymptotically optimal, thus establishing an exponential separation between the number of circuits required to directly measure all elements of qubit versus fermion RDMs. We further demonstrate a technique to estimate the expectation value of any linear combination of fermionic 2-RDM elements using O(N4/ω){\cal O}(N^4 / \omega)O(N4/ω) circuits, each with only O(ω){\cal O}(\omega)O(ω) gates on a linear array where ω≤N\omega \leq Nω≤N is a free parameter. We expect these results will improve the viability of many proposals for near-term quantum simulation.
We propose a tomographic protocol for estimating any k-body reduced density matrix (k-RDM) of an n-mode fermionic state, a ubiquitous step in near-term quantum algorithms for simulating many-body physics, chemistry, and materials. Our approach extends the framework of classical shadows, a randomized approach to learning a collection of quantum-state properties, to the fermionic setting. Our sampling protocol uses randomized measurement settings generated by a discrete group of fermionic Gaussian unitaries, implementable with linear-depth circuits. We prove that estimating all k-RDM elements to additive precision ϵ requires on the order of (n/k)k^{3/2}log(n)/ϵ^{2} repeated state preparations, which is optimal up to the logarithmic factor. Furthermore, numerical calculations show that our protocol offers a substantial improvement in constant overheads for k≥2, as compared to prior deterministic strategies. We also adapt our method to particle-number symmetry, wherein the additional circuit depth may be halved at the cost of roughly 2-5 times more repetitions.
Fermionic reduced density matrices summarize the key observables in Fermionic systems. In electronic systems, the two-particle reduced density matrix (2-RDM) is sufficient to determine the energy and most physical observables of interest. Here, we consider the possibility of using matrix completion to reconstruct the two-particle reduced density matrix to chemical accuracy from partial information. We consider the case of noiseless matrix completion, where the partial information corresponds to a subset of the 2-RDM elements, as well as noisy completion, where the partial information corresponds to both a subset of elements and statistical noise in their values. Through experiments on a set of 24 molecular systems, we find that 2-RDM can be efficiently reconstructed from a reduced amount of information. In the case of noisy completion, this results in a multiple orders of magnitude reduction in the number of measurements needed to determine the 2-RDM with chemical accuracy. These techniques can be readily applied to both classical and quantum algorithms for quantum simulations.
Classical shadow tomography provides a randomized scheme for approximating the quantum state and its properties at reduced computational cost with applications in quantum computing. In this Letter we present an algorithm for realizing fewer measurements in the shadow tomography of many-body systems. Accelerated tomography of the two-body reduced density matrix (2-RDM) is achieved by combining classical shadows with necessary constraints for the 2-RDM to represent an N-body system, known as N-representability conditions. We compute the ground-state energies and 2-RDMs of hydrogen chains and the N_{2} dissociation curve. The results demonstrate a significant reduction in the number of measurements with important applications to quantum many-body simulations on near-term quantum devices.
Variational algorithms for strongly correlated chemical and materials systems are one of the most promising applications of near-term quantum computers. We present an extension to the variational quantum eigensolver that approximates the ground state of a system by solving a generalized eigenvalue problem in a subspace spanned by a collection of parametrized quantum states. This allows for the systematic improvement of a logical wavefunction ansatz without a significant increase in circuit complexity. To minimize the circuit complexity of this approach, we propose a strategy for efficiently measuring the Hamiltonian and overlap matrix elements between states parametrized by circuits that commute with the total particle number operator. This strategy doubles the size of the state preparation circuits but not their depth, while adding a small number of additional two-qubit gates relative to standard variational quantum eigensolver. We also propose a classical Monte Carlo scheme to estimate the uncertainty in the ground state energy caused by a finite number of measurements of the matrix elements. We explain how this Monte Carlo procedure can be extended to adaptively schedule the required measurements, reducing the number of circuit executions necessary for a given accuracy. We apply these ideas to two model strongly correlated systems, a square configuration of H4 and the π-system of hexatriene (C6H8).
Variational algorithms for strongly correlated chemical and materials systems are one of the most promising applications of near-term quantum computers. We present an extension to the variational quantum eigensolver that approximates the ground state of a system by solving a generalized eigenvalue problem in a subspace spanned by a collection of parametrized quantum states. This allows for the systematic improvement of a logical wavefunction ansatz without a significant increase in circuit complexity. To minimize the circuit complexity of this approach, we propose a strategy for efficiently measuring the Hamiltonian and overlap matrix elements between states parametrized by circuits that commute with the total particle number operator. This strategy doubles the size of the state preparation circuits but not their depth, while adding a small number of additional two-qubit gates relative to standard variational quantum eigensolver. We also propose a classical Monte Carlo scheme to estimate the uncertainty in the ground state energy caused by a finite number of measurements of the matrix elements. We explain how this Monte Carlo procedure can be extended to adaptively schedule the required measurements, reducing the number of circuit executions necessary for a given accuracy. We apply these ideas to two model strongly correlated systems, a square configuration of H 4 and the π -system of hexatriene (C 6 H 8 ).