Southwest Quantum Information and Technology

Variational fast forwarding for quantum simulation beyond the coherence time

Presenting Author: Andrew Sornborger, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Contributing Author(s): Cristina Cirstoiu, Zoe Holes, Joseph Iosue, Lukasz Cincio, Patrick Coles

Trotterization-based, iterative approaches to quantum simulation are restricted to simulation times less than the coherence time of the quantum computer, which limits their utility in the near term. Here, we present a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm, called Variational Fast Forwarding (VFF), for decreasing the quantum circuit depth of quantum simulations. VFF seeks an approximate diagonalization of a short-time simulation to enable longer-time simulations using a constant number of gates. Our error analysis provides two results: (1) the simulation error of VFF scales at worst linearly in the fast-forwarded simulation time, and (2) our cost function's operational meaning as an upper bound on average-case simulation error provides a natural termination condition for VFF. We implement VFF for the Hubbard, Ising, and Heisenberg models on a simulator. Finally, we implement VFF on Rigetti's quantum computer to show simulation beyond the coherence time.

Read this article online: https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.04292

(Session 9a : Sunday from 4:15pm - 4:45pm)