Accelerated Quantum Monte Carlo with Mitigated Error on Noisy Quantum Computer

Abstract

Quantum Monte Carlo and quantum simulation are both important tools for understanding quantum many-body systems. As a classical algorithm, quantum Monte Carlo suffers from the sign problem, preventing its application to most fermion systems and real-time dynamics. In this paper, we introduce a novel nonvariational algorithm using quantum simulation as a subroutine to accelerate quantum Monte Carlo by easing the sign problem. The quantum subroutine can be implemented with shallow circuits and, by incorporating error mitigation, can reduce the Monte Carlo variance by several orders of magnitude even when the circuit noise is significant. As such, the proposed quantum algorithm is applicable to near-term noisy quantum hardware.