Strategies to simulate dephasing-assisted quantum transport on digital quantum computers

TL;DR

This paper introduces two quantum algorithms to simulate environment-assisted quantum transport in molecular networks on digital quantum computers, demonstrating their efficiency and distinct unravellings of the master equation.

Contribution

It presents novel algorithms based on stochastic Hamiltonians and collision schemes for simulating ENAQT, with efficient qubit scaling and analysis of their unravellings.

Findings

Both algorithms are memory efficient with logarithmic qubit scaling.

Simulation results on a quantum emulator demonstrate the algorithms' effectiveness.

Distinct unravellings of the master equation are realized by the two approaches.

Abstract

Simulating charge and energy transfer in extended molecular networks requires an effective model to include the environment because it significantly affects the quantum dynamics. A prototypical effect known as Environment-Assisted Quantum Transport (ENAQT) consists in the modulation and sometimes enhancement of the transfer efficiency by the interaction with an environment. A simple description of this phenomenon is obtained by a quantum master equation describing a quantum walk over the molecular network in the presence of inter-site decoherence. We consider the problem of simulating the dynamics underlying ENAQT in a digital quantum computer. Two different quantum algorithms are introduced, the first one based on stochastic Hamiltonians and the second one based on a collision scheme. We test both algorithms by simulating ENAQT in a small molecular network on a quantum computer emulator and provide a comparative analysis of the two approaches. Both algorithms can be implemented in a memory efficient encoding with the number of required qubits scaling logarithmically with the size of the simulated system while the number of gates increases quadratically. We discuss the algorithmic quantum trajectories generated by the two simulation strategies showing that they realize distinct unravellings of the site-dephasing master equation. In our approach, the non-unitary dynamics of the open system is obtained through effective representations of the environment, paving the way to digital quantum simulations of quantum transport influenced by structured environments.