Continuous-variable assisted thermal quantum simulation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a continuous-variable assisted quantum algorithm for simulating finite-temperature quantum many-body systems, demonstrating its efficiency and feasibility on current quantum hardware.

Contribution

The authors develop a novel quantum algorithm that combines continuous-variable techniques to efficiently simulate finite-temperature quantum systems, with demonstrated application to the Kitaev model.

Findings

Efficient polynomial time complexity with respect to inverse temperature and accuracy.

Successful simulation of the Kitaev model's phase diagram using few qubits.

Protocol implementation feasible on superconducting or trapped ion quantum computers.

Abstract

Simulation of a quantum many-body system at finite temperatures is crucially important but quite challenging. Here we present an experimentally feasible quantum algorithm assisted with continuous-variable for simulating quantum systems at finite temperatures. Our algorithm has a time complexity scaling polynomially with the inverse temperature and the desired accuracy. We demonstrate the quantum algorithm by simulating finite temperature phase diagram of the Kitaev model. It is found that the important crossover phase diagram of the Kitaev ring can be accurately simulated by a quantum computer with only a few qubits and thus the algorithm may be readily implemented on current quantum processors. We further propose a protocol implementable with superconducting or trapped ion quantum computers.