Local variational quantum compilation of a large-scale Hamiltonian dynamics

TL;DR

The paper introduces LVQC, a local variational quantum compilation method that efficiently approximates large-scale Hamiltonian time evolution operators using smaller quantum systems, enabling scalable quantum simulation.

Contribution

LVQC is a novel algorithm that leverages subsystem cost functions and Lieb-Robinson bounds to compile large-scale quantum dynamics on limited-size quantum computers or simulators.

Findings

LVQC accurately compiles time evolution operators for large systems.

The method scales with subsystem size, enabling efficient large-scale simulation.

Numerical demonstrations show successful compression for 40-qubit operators.

Abstract

Implementing time evolution operators on quantum circuits is important for quantum simulation. However, the standard way, Trotterization, requires a huge numbers of gates to achieve desirable accuracy. Here, we propose a local variational quantum compilation (LVQC) algorithm, which allows to accurately and efficiently compile a time evolution operators on a large-scale quantum system by the optimization with smaller-size quantum systems. LVQC utilizes a subsystem cost function, which approximates the fidelity of the whole circuit, defined for each subsystem as large as approximate causal cones brought by the Lieb-Robinson (LR) bound. We rigorously derive its scaling property with respect to the subsystem size, and show that the optimization conducted on the subsystem size leads to the compilation of whole-system time evolution operators. As a result, LVQC runs with limited-size quantum computers or classical simulators that can handle such smaller quantum systems. For instance, finite-ranged and short-ranged interacting $L$-size systems can be compiled with $O(L^0)$- or $O(\log L)$-size quantum systems depending on observables of interest. Furthermore, since this formalism relies only on the LR bound, it can efficiently construct time evolution operators of various systems in generic dimension involving finite-, short-, and long-ranged interactions. We also numerically demonstrate the LVQC algorithm for one-dimensional systems. Employing classical simulation by time-evolving block decimation, we succeed in compressing the depth of a time evolution operators up to $40$ qubits by the compilation for $20$ qubits. LVQC not only provides classical protocols for designing large-scale quantum circuits, but also will shed light on applications of intermediate-scale quantum devices in implementing algorithms in larger-scale quantum devices.