Holographic quantum algorithms for simulating correlated spin systems

Abstract

We present a suite of “holographic” quantum algorithms for efficient ground-state preparation and dynamical evolution of correlated spin systems, which require far fewer qubits than the number of spins being simulated. The algorithms exploit the equivalence between matrix-product states (MPS) and quantum channels, along with partial measurement and qubit reuse, in order to simulate a D-dimensional spin system using only a (D−1)-dimensional subset of qubits along with an ancillary qubit register whose size scales logarithmically in the amount of entanglement present in the simulated state. Ground states can either be directly prepared from a known MPS representation or obtained via a holographic variational quantum eigensolver (holoVQE). Dynamics of MPS under local Hamiltonians for time t can also be simulated with an additional (multiplicative) poly(t) overhead in qubit resources. These techniques open the door to efficient quantum simulation of MPS with exponentially large bond dimension, including ground states of two- and three-dimensional systems, or thermalizing dynamics with rapid entanglement growth. As a demonstration of the potential resource savings, we implement a holoVQE simulation of the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain on a trapped-ion quantum computer, achieving within 10(3)% of the exact ground-state energy of an infinite chain using only a pair of qubits.