58 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
Quantum information in the Posner model of quantum cognition
Matthew Fisher recently postulated a mechanism by which quantum phenomena
could influence cognition: Phosphorus nuclear spins may resist decoherence for
long times, especially when in Posner molecules. The spins would serve as
biological qubits. We imagine that Fisher postulates correctly. How adroitly
could biological systems process quantum information (QI)? We establish a
framework for answering. Additionally, we construct applications of biological
qubits to quantum error correction, quantum communication, and quantum
computation. First, we posit how the QI encoded by the spins transforms as
Posner molecules form. The transformation points to a natural computational
basis for qubits in Posner molecules. From the basis, we construct a quantum
code that detects arbitrary single-qubit errors. Each molecule encodes one
qutrit. Shifting from information storage to computation, we define the model
of Posner quantum computation. To illustrate the model's quantum-communication
ability, we show how it can teleport information incoherently: A state's
weights are teleported. Dephasing results from the entangling operation's
simulation of a coarse-grained Bell measurement. Whether Posner quantum
computation is universal remains an open question. However, the model's
operations can efficiently prepare a Posner state usable as a resource in
universal measurement-based quantum computation. The state results from
deforming the Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki (AKLT) state and is a projected
entangled-pair state (PEPS). Finally, we show that entanglement can affect
molecular-binding rates, boosting a binding probability from 33.6% to 100% in
an example. This work opens the door for the QI-theoretic analysis of
biological qubits and Posner molecules.Comment: Published versio
The performance of the quantum adiabatic algorithm on spike Hamiltonians
Spike Hamiltonians arise from optimization instances for which the adiabatic algorithm provably out performs classical simulated annealing. In this work, we study the efficiency of the adiabatic algorithm for solving the āthe Hamming weight with a spikeā problem by analyzing the scaling of the spectral gap at the critical point for various sizes of the barrier. Our main result is a rigorous lower bound on the minimum spectral gap for the adiabatic evolution when the bit-symmetric cost function has a thin but polynomially high barrier, which is based on a comparison argument and an improved variational ansatz for the ground state. We also adapt the discrete WKB method for the case of abruptly changing potentials and compare it with the predictions of the spin coherent instanton method which was previously used by Farhi, Goldstone and Gutmann. Finally, our improved ansatz for the ground state leads to a method for predicting the location of avoided crossings in the excited energy states of the thin spike Hamiltonian, and we use a recursion relation to understand the ordering of some of these avoided crossings as a step towards analyzing the previously observed diabatic cascade phenomenon
Good approximate quantum LDPC codes from spacetime circuit Hamiltonians
We study approximate quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) codes, which
are approximate quantum error-correcting codes specified as the ground space of
a frustration-free local Hamiltonian, whose terms do not necessarily commute.
Such codes generalize stabilizer QLDPC codes, which are exact quantum
error-correcting codes with sparse, low-weight stabilizer generators (i.e. each
stabilizer generator acts on a few qubits, and each qubit participates in a few
stabilizer generators). Our investigation is motivated by an important question
in Hamiltonian complexity and quantum coding theory: do stabilizer QLDPC codes
with constant rate, linear distance, and constant-weight stabilizers exist?
We show that obtaining such optimal scaling of parameters (modulo
polylogarithmic corrections) is possible if we go beyond stabilizer codes: we
prove the existence of a family of approximate QLDPC
codes that encode logical qubits into physical
qubits with distance and approximation infidelity
. The code space is
stabilized by a set of 10-local noncommuting projectors, with each physical
qubit only participating in projectors. We
prove the existence of an efficient encoding map, and we show that arbitrary
Pauli errors can be locally detected by circuits of polylogarithmic depth.
Finally, we show that the spectral gap of the code Hamiltonian is
by analyzing a spacetime circuit-to-Hamiltonian
construction for a bitonic sorting network architecture that is spatially local
in dimensions.Comment: 51 pages, 13 figure
Rapid mixing of path integral Monte Carlo for 1D stoquastic Hamiltonians
Path integral quantum Monte Carlo (PIMC) is a method for estimating thermal
equilibrium properties of stoquastic quantum spin systems by sampling from a
classical Gibbs distribution using Markov chain Monte Carlo. The PIMC method
has been widely used to study the physics of materials and for simulated
quantum annealing, but these successful applications are rarely accompanied by
formal proofs that the Markov chains underlying PIMC rapidly converge to the
desired equilibrium distribution. In this work we analyze the mixing time of
PIMC for 1D stoquastic Hamiltonians, including disordered transverse Ising
models (TIM) with long-range algebraically decaying interactions as well as
disordered XY spin chains with nearest-neighbor interactions. By bounding the
convergence time to the equilibrium distribution we rigorously justify the use
of PIMC to approximate partition functions and expectations of observables for
these models at inverse temperatures that scale at most logarithmically with
the number of qubits. The mixing time analysis is based on the canonical paths
method applied to the single-site Metropolis Markov chain for the Gibbs
distribution of 2D classical spin models with couplings related to the
interactions in the quantum Hamiltonian. Since the system has strongly
nonisotropic couplings that grow with system size, it does not fall into the
known cases where 2D classical spin models are known to mix rapidly.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figures, version published in Quantu
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