Low-depth circuit ansatz for preparing correlated fermionic states on a quantum computer

TL;DR

This paper introduces a low-depth quantum circuit ansatz for preparing correlated fermionic states, enhancing the variational quantum eigensolver's ability to simulate strongly correlated systems like superconductors and nuclei.

Contribution

It proposes initializing VQE with a fermionic Gaussian state prepared via linear-depth matchgate circuits, extending applicability to strongly correlated fermionic systems.

Findings

Gaussian state initialization improves accuracy

Low-depth circuits enable simulation of complex fermionic systems

Enhanced VQE applicability to superconductors and nuclei

Abstract

Quantum simulations are bound to be one of the main applications of near-term quantum computers. Quantum chemistry and condensed matter physics are expected to benefit from these technological developments. Several quantum simulation methods are known to prepare a state on a quantum computer and measure the desired observables. The most resource economic procedure is the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE), which has traditionally employed unitary coupled cluster as the ansatz to approximate ground states of many-body fermionic Hamiltonians. A significant caveat of the method is that the initial state of the procedure is a single reference product state with no entanglement extracted from a classical Hartree-Fock calculation. In this work, we propose to improve the method by initializing the algorithm with a more general fermionic Gaussian state, an idea borrowed from the field of nuclear physics. We show how this Gaussian reference state can be prepared with a linear-depth circuit of quantum matchgates. By augmenting the set of available gates with nearest-neighbor phase coupling, we generate a low-depth circuit ansatz that can accurately prepare the ground state of correlated fermionic systems. This extends the range of applicability of the VQE to systems with strong pairing correlations such as superconductors, atomic nuclei, and topological materials.