788 research outputs found
Quantum ground state isoperimetric inequalities for the energy spectrum of local Hamiltonians
We investigate the relationship between the energy spectrum of a local
Hamiltonian and the geometric properties of its ground state. By generalizing a
standard framework from the analysis of Markov chains to arbitrary
(non-stoquastic) Hamiltonians we are naturally led to see that the spectral gap
can always be upper bounded by an isoperimetric ratio that depends only on the
ground state probability distribution and the range of the terms in the
Hamiltonian, but not on any other details of the interaction couplings. This
means that for a given probability distribution the inequality constrains the
spectral gap of any local Hamiltonian with this distribution as its ground
state probability distribution in some basis (Eldar and Harrow derived a
similar result in order to characterize the output of low-depth quantum
circuits). Going further, we relate the Hilbert space localization properties
of the ground state to higher energy eigenvalues by showing that the presence
of k strongly localized ground state modes (i.e. clusters of probability, or
subsets with small expansion) in Hilbert space implies the presence of k energy
eigenvalues that are close to the ground state energy. Our results suggest that
quantum adiabatic optimization using local Hamiltonians will inevitably
encounter small spectral gaps when attempting to prepare ground states
corresponding to multi-modal probability distributions with strongly localized
modes, and this problem cannot necessarily be alleviated with the inclusion of
non-stoquastic couplings
Area laws for the entanglement entropy - a review
Physical interactions in quantum many-body systems are typically local:
Individual constituents interact mainly with their few nearest neighbors. This
locality of interactions is inherited by a decay of correlation functions, but
also reflected by scaling laws of a quite profound quantity: The entanglement
entropy of ground states. This entropy of the reduced state of a subregion
often merely grows like the boundary area of the subregion, and not like its
volume, in sharp contrast with an expected extensive behavior. Such "area laws"
for the entanglement entropy and related quantities have received considerable
attention in recent years. They emerge in several seemingly unrelated fields,
in the context of black hole physics, quantum information science, and quantum
many-body physics where they have important implications on the numerical
simulation of lattice models. In this Colloquium we review the current status
of area laws in these fields. Center stage is taken by rigorous results on
lattice models in one and higher spatial dimensions. The differences and
similarities between bosonic and fermionic models are stressed, area laws are
related to the velocity of information propagation, and disordered systems,
non-equilibrium situations, classical correlation concepts, and topological
entanglement entropies are discussed. A significant proportion of the article
is devoted to the quantitative connection between the entanglement content of
states and the possibility of their efficient numerical simulation. We discuss
matrix-product states, higher-dimensional analogues, and states from
entanglement renormalization and conclude by highlighting the implications of
area laws on quantifying the effective degrees of freedom that need to be
considered in simulations.Comment: 28 pages, 2 figures, final versio
Quantum Hamiltonian Complexity
Constraint satisfaction problems are a central pillar of modern computational
complexity theory. This survey provides an introduction to the rapidly growing
field of Quantum Hamiltonian Complexity, which includes the study of quantum
constraint satisfaction problems. Over the past decade and a half, this field
has witnessed fundamental breakthroughs, ranging from the establishment of a
"Quantum Cook-Levin Theorem" to deep insights into the structure of 1D
low-temperature quantum systems via so-called area laws. Our aim here is to
provide a computer science-oriented introduction to the subject in order to
help bridge the language barrier between computer scientists and physicists in
the field. As such, we include the following in this survey: (1) The
motivations and history of the field, (2) a glossary of condensed matter
physics terms explained in computer-science friendly language, (3) overviews of
central ideas from condensed matter physics, such as indistinguishable
particles, mean field theory, tensor networks, and area laws, and (4) brief
expositions of selected computer science-based results in the area. For
example, as part of the latter, we provide a novel information theoretic
presentation of Bravyi's polynomial time algorithm for Quantum 2-SAT.Comment: v4: published version, 127 pages, introduction expanded to include
brief introduction to quantum information, brief list of some recent
developments added, minor changes throughou
Using the J1-J2 Quantum Spin Chain as an Adiabatic Quantum Data Bus
This paper investigates numerically a phenomenon which can be used to
transport a single q-bit down a J1-J2 Heisenberg spin chain using a quantum
adiabatic process. The motivation for investigating such processes comes from
the idea that this method of transport could potentially be used as a means of
sending data to various parts of a quantum computer made of artificial spins,
and that this method could take advantage of the easily prepared ground state
at the so called Majumdar-Ghosh point. We examine several annealing protocols
for this process and find similar result for all of them. The annealing process
works well up to a critical frustration threshold.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures (2 added), revisions made to add citations and
additional discussion at request of referee
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