Preparing thermal states of quantum systems by dimension reduction

We present an algorithm that prepares thermal Gibbs states of one dimensional quantum systems on a quantum computer without any memory overhead, and in a time significantly shorter than other known alternatives. Specifically, the time complexity is dominated by the quantity $N^{\|h\|/ T}$, where $N$ is the size of the system, $\|h\|$ is a bound on the operator norm of the local terms of the Hamiltonian (coupling energy), and $T$ is the temperature. Given other results on the complexity of thermalization, this overall scaling is likely optimal. For higher dimensions, our algorithm lowers the known scaling of the time complexity with the dimension of the system by one.Comment: Published version. Minor editorial changes, one new reference added. 4 pages, 1 figur

Anyonic entanglement renormalization

We introduce a family of variational ansatz states for chains of anyons which optimally exploits the structure of the anyonic Hilbert space. This ansatz is the natural analog of the multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz for spin chains. In particular, it has the same interpretation as a coarse-graining procedure and is expected to accurately describe critical systems with algebraically decaying correlations. We numerically investigate the validity of this ansatz using the anyonic golden chain and its relatives as a testbed. This demonstrates the power of entanglement renormalization in a setting with non-abelian exchange statistics, extending previous work on qudits, bosons and fermions in two dimensions.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures, v2: extended, updated to match published versio

Coarse grained belief propagation for simulation of interacting quantum systems at all temperatures

We continue our numerical study of quantum belief propagation initiated in [Phys. Rev. A, 77 (2008), p. 052318]. We demonstrate how the method can be expressed in terms of an effective thermal potential that materializes when the system presents quantum correlations, but is insensitive to classical correlations. The thermal potential provides an efficient means to assess the precision of belief propagation on graphs with no loops. We illustrate these concepts using the one-dimensional quantum Ising model and compare our results with exact solutions. We also use the method to study the transverse field quantum Ising spin glass for which we obtain a phase diagram that is largely in agreement with the one obtained in [arXiv:0706.4391] using a different approach. Finally, we introduce the coarse grained belief propagation (CGBP) algorithm to improve belief propagation at low temperatures. This method combines the reliability of belief propagation at high temperatures with the ability of entanglement renormalization to efficiently describe low energy subspaces of quantum systems with local interactions. With CGBP, thermodynamic properties of quantum systems can be calculated with a high degree of accuracy at all temperatures.Comment: updated references and acknowledgement

Belief propagation algorithm for computing correlation functions in finite-temperature quantum many-body systems on loopy graphs

Belief propagation -- a powerful heuristic method to solve inference problems involving a large number of random variables -- was recently generalized to quantum theory. Like its classical counterpart, this algorithm is exact on trees when the appropriate independence conditions are met and is expected to provide reliable approximations when operated on loopy graphs. In this paper, we benchmark the performances of loopy quantum belief propagation (QBP) in the context of finite-tempereture quantum many-body physics. Our results indicate that QBP provides reliable estimates of the high-temperature correlation function when the typical loop size in the graph is large. As such, it is suitable e.g. for the study of quantum spin glasses on Bethe lattices and the decoding of sparse quantum error correction codes.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

General Issues Connecting Flavor Symmetry and Supersymmetry

We motivate and construct supersymmetric theories with continuous flavor symmetry, under which the electroweak Higgs doublets transform non-trivially. Flavor symmetry is spontaneously broken at a large mass scale in a sector of gauge-singlet fields; the light Higgs multiplets naturally emerge as special linear combinations that avoid acquiring the generic large mass. Couplings of the light Higgs doublets to light moduli fields from the singlet sector could lead to important effects in the phenomenology of the Higgs sector.Comment: 5 page

Simulation of Strongly Correlated Quantum Many-Body Systems

In this thesis, we address the problem of solving for the properties of interacting quantum many-body systems in thermal equilibrium. The complexity of this problem increases exponentially with system size, limiting exact numerical simulations to very small systems. To tackle more complex systems, one needs to use heuristic algorithms that approximate solutions to these systems. Belief propagation is one such algorithm that we discuss in chapters 2 and 3. Using belief propagation, we demonstrate that it is possible to solve for static properties of highly correlated quantum many-body systems for certain geometries at all temperatures. In chapter 4, we generalize the multiscale renormalization ansatz to the anyonic setting to solve for the ground state properties of anyonic quantum many-body systems. The algorithms we present in chapters 2, 3, and 4 are very successful in certain settings, but they are not applicable to the most general quantum mechanical systems. For this, we propose using quantum computers as we discuss in chapter 5. The dimension reduction algorithm we consider in chapter 5 enables us to prepare thermal states of any quantum many-body system on a quantum computer faster than any previously known algorithm. Using these thermal states as the initialization of a quantum computer, one can study both static and dynamic properties of quantum systems without any memory overhead

Simulation of Strongly Correlated Quantum Many-Body Systems

Copyright notice and joint work: Chapters 1, 2, and 3 contain material from [1], [2] and [3], and are joint work with David Poulin. Chapter 4 is from [3] and is joint work with Robert König. Chapter 5 contains material from [4] and is joint work with Sergio Boixo. copyrighted by the American Physical Society. All articles referenced above are c ○ 201