Single-Trajectory Gibbs Sampling for Non-Commuting Observables

TL;DR

This paper extends single-trajectory Gibbs sampling to non-commuting observables in quantum systems, enabling efficient measurement without full re-thermalization, thus reducing computational overhead in estimating thermal expectation values.

Contribution

It introduces two measurement constructions that preserve the Gibbs state for non-commuting observables, enabling efficient, non-destructive sampling in quantum Gibbs states.

Findings

Constructed a measurement satisfying exact detailed balance.

Designed a measurement scheme with rapid re-mixing assuming a spectral gap.

Achieved polylogarithmic Hamiltonian simulation time for implementations.

Abstract

Estimating thermal expectation values of quantum many-body systems is a central challenge in physics, chemistry, and materials science. Standard quantum Gibbs sampling protocols address this task by preparing the Gibbs state from scratch after every measurement, incurring a full mixing-time cost at each step. Recent advances in single-trajectory Gibbs sampling \cite{jiang2026} substantially reduce this overhead: once stationarity is reached, measurements can be collected along a single trajectory without re-thermalizing, provided the measurement channel preserves the Gibbs ensemble. However, explicit constructions of such non-destructive measurements have been limited primarily to observables that commute with the Hamiltonian. In this work, we fundamentally extend the single-trajectory framework to arbitrary, non-commuting observables. We provide two measurement constructions that extract measurement information without fully destroying the Gibbs state, thereby eliminating the need for full re-mixing between samples. First, we construct a measurement that satisfies exact detailed balance. This ensures the system remains in equilibrium throughout the trajectory, allowing measurement outcomes to decorrelate in an autocorrelation time that could be significantly shorter than the global mixing time. Second, assuming the underlying quantum Gibbs sampler has a positive spectral gap, we design a simplified measurement scheme that ensures the post-selected state serves as a warm start for rapid re-mixing. This approach successfully decouples the resampling cost from the global mixing time. Both measurement schemes admit efficient quantum circuit implementations, requiring only polylogarithmic Hamiltonian simulation time.