DOE PAGES title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Witnessing eigenstates for quantum simulation of Hamiltonian spectra

Abstract

The efficient calculation of Hamiltonian spectra, a problem often intractable on classical machines, can find application in many fields, from physics to chemistry. We introduce the concept of an “eigenstate witness” and, through it, provide a new quantum approach that combines variational methods and phase estimation to approximate eigenvalues for both ground and excited states. This protocol is experimentally verified on a programmable silicon quantum photonic chip, a mass-manufacturable platform, which embeds entangled state generation, arbitrary controlled unitary operations, and projective measurements. Both ground and excited states are experimentally found with fidelities >99%, and their eigenvalues are estimated with 32 bits of precision. We also investigate and discuss the scalability of the approach and study its performance through numerical simulations of more complex Hamiltonians. This result shows promising progress toward quantum chemistry on quantum computers.

Authors:
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [5]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [6]; ORCiD logo [7]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]
  1. Univ. of Bristol (United Kingdom). Quantum Engineering Technology Labs. H. H. Wills Physics Lab. Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
  2. Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA (United States). Quantum Architectures and Computation Group
  3. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Computational Research Division; Google Inc., Venice, CA (United States)
  4. Univ. of Bristol (United Kingdom). Quantum Engineering Centre for Doctoral Training. Quantum Engineering Technology Labs. H. H. Wills Physics Lab. Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
  5. Imperial College London (United Kingdom). Dept. of Physics
  6. Univ. of Bristol (United Kingdom). School of Chemistry; Max Planck Inst. for Solid State Research, Stuttgart (Germany)
  7. Sun Yat-Sen Univ., Guangzhou (China). State Key Lab. of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies. School of Physics
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); LBNL Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program; US Army Research Office (ARO); Royal Society (United Kingdom); Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC); European Research Council (ERC); National Key Research and Development Program (China); National Young 1000 Talents Plan (China); Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong (China)
OSTI Identifier:
1494079
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC02-05CH11231; W911NF-14-013; UF130574; K033085/1; J017175/1; K02193/1; 648667; 608062; 641039; 640079; EP/L015730/1; 2016YFA0301700; 2017YFA0305200; 2016A030312012
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Science Advances
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 4; Journal Issue: 1; Journal ID: ISSN 2375-2548
Publisher:
AAAS
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
42 ENGINEERING; 97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING; 37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY

Citation Formats

Santagati, Raffaele, Wang, Jianwei, Gentile, Antonio A., Paesani, Stefano, Wiebe, Nathan, McClean, Jarrod R., Morley-Short, Sam, Shadbolt, Peter J., Bonneau, Damien, Silverstone, Joshua W., Tew, David P., Zhou, Xiaoqi, O’Brien, Jeremy L., and Thompson, Mark G.. Witnessing eigenstates for quantum simulation of Hamiltonian spectra. United States: N. p., 2018. Web. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aap9646.
Santagati, Raffaele, Wang, Jianwei, Gentile, Antonio A., Paesani, Stefano, Wiebe, Nathan, McClean, Jarrod R., Morley-Short, Sam, Shadbolt, Peter J., Bonneau, Damien, Silverstone, Joshua W., Tew, David P., Zhou, Xiaoqi, O’Brien, Jeremy L., & Thompson, Mark G.. Witnessing eigenstates for quantum simulation of Hamiltonian spectra. United States. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aap9646
Santagati, Raffaele, Wang, Jianwei, Gentile, Antonio A., Paesani, Stefano, Wiebe, Nathan, McClean, Jarrod R., Morley-Short, Sam, Shadbolt, Peter J., Bonneau, Damien, Silverstone, Joshua W., Tew, David P., Zhou, Xiaoqi, O’Brien, Jeremy L., and Thompson, Mark G.. Fri . "Witnessing eigenstates for quantum simulation of Hamiltonian spectra". United States. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aap9646. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1494079.
@article{osti_1494079,
title = {Witnessing eigenstates for quantum simulation of Hamiltonian spectra},
author = {Santagati, Raffaele and Wang, Jianwei and Gentile, Antonio A. and Paesani, Stefano and Wiebe, Nathan and McClean, Jarrod R. and Morley-Short, Sam and Shadbolt, Peter J. and Bonneau, Damien and Silverstone, Joshua W. and Tew, David P. and Zhou, Xiaoqi and O’Brien, Jeremy L. and Thompson, Mark G.},
abstractNote = {The efficient calculation of Hamiltonian spectra, a problem often intractable on classical machines, can find application in many fields, from physics to chemistry. We introduce the concept of an “eigenstate witness” and, through it, provide a new quantum approach that combines variational methods and phase estimation to approximate eigenvalues for both ground and excited states. This protocol is experimentally verified on a programmable silicon quantum photonic chip, a mass-manufacturable platform, which embeds entangled state generation, arbitrary controlled unitary operations, and projective measurements. Both ground and excited states are experimentally found with fidelities >99%, and their eigenvalues are estimated with 32 bits of precision. We also investigate and discuss the scalability of the approach and study its performance through numerical simulations of more complex Hamiltonians. This result shows promising progress toward quantum chemistry on quantum computers.},
doi = {10.1126/sciadv.aap9646},
journal = {Science Advances},
number = 1,
volume = 4,
place = {United States},
year = {2018},
month = {1}
}

Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record

Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 109 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

Figures / Tables:

Fig. 1 Fig. 1: The WAVES protocol. (A) Flowchart describing the protocol. The optimization of $\mathcal{F}$obj($\vec{θ}$) = ε + $\mathcal{TS}$ using the circuit in (B) allows one to variationally find the ground state of the Hamiltonian, preparing trial states via the ansatz Â($\vec{θ}$) with no perturbation (Ê$_{p_{0}}$ = Î). An initial guessmore » for an excited state is given by a perturbation Ê$_{p_{i}}$ on the ground state and then refined using the same circuit by exploiting the eigenstate witness $\mathcal{F}$obj($\vec{θ}$) = $\mathcal{S}$ (high‐T limit). (C) For each target eigenstate found, the eigenvalues are precisely estimated via the IPEA using the quantum logic circuit, where H is the Hadamard gate. The color coding in (B) and (C), blue for the control and red for the target, refers to the difference in wavelength between the photon in the control qubit and the one in the target register in our experimental implementation. (D) Diagram schematically representing the intuition behind the proposed approach, where initial guesses of excited states are variationally refined using the witness and IPEA returns the eigenvalues.« less

Save / Share:

Works referenced in this record:

Chemical basis of Trotter-Suzuki errors in quantum chemistry simulation
journal, February 2015


Photonic simulation of entanglement growth and engineering after a spin chain quench
journal, November 2017


Why quantum chemistry is hard
journal, October 2009


Solving Schrödinger’s equation around a desired energy: Application to silicon quantum dots
journal, February 1994

  • Wang, Lin‐Wang; Zunger, Alex
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 100, Issue 3, p. 2394-2397
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.466486

A quantum Fredkin gate
journal, March 2016


Silicon photonic processor of two-qubit entangling quantum logic
journal, October 2017


A variational eigenvalue solver on a photonic quantum processor
journal, July 2014

  • Peruzzo, Alberto; McClean, Jarrod; Shadbolt, Peter
  • Nature Communications, Vol. 5, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5213

Quantum simulation
journal, March 2014


Exponentially more precise quantum simulation of fermions in second quantization
journal, March 2016


Some surprising failures of Brueckner coupled cluster theory
journal, May 2000

  • Crawford, T. Daniel; Stanton, John F.
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 112, Issue 18
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.481424

Transition state theory can be used in studies of enzyme catalysis: lessons from simulations of tunnelling and dynamical effects in lipoxygenase and other systems
journal, July 2006

  • Olsson, Mats H. M.; Mavri, Janez; Warshel, Arieh
  • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Vol. 361, Issue 1472
  • DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2006.1880

Quantum chemistry of the excited state: 2005 overview
journal, September 2005


Qubit entanglement between ring-resonator photon-pair sources on a silicon chip
journal, August 2015

  • Silverstone, J. W.; Santagati, R.; Bonneau, D.
  • Nature Communications, Vol. 6, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8948

Silicon waveguides for creating quantum-correlated photon pairs
journal, January 2006


NMR Implementation of a Molecular Hydrogen Quantum Simulation with Adiabatic State Preparation
journal, January 2010


Quantum simulations with ultracold quantum gases
journal, April 2012

  • Bloch, Immanuel; Dalibard, Jean; Nascimbène, Sylvain
  • Nature Physics, Vol. 8, Issue 4
  • DOI: 10.1038/nphys2259

Quantum simulations with trapped ions
journal, April 2012


Solving the quantum many-body problem with artificial neural networks
journal, February 2017


Universal Digital Quantum Simulation with Trapped Ions
journal, September 2011


Experimental quantum Hamiltonian learning
journal, March 2017

  • Wang, Jianwei; Paesani, Stefano; Santagati, Raffaele
  • Nature Physics, Vol. 13, Issue 6
  • DOI: 10.1038/nphys4074

Simulated Quantum Computation of Molecular Energies
journal, September 2005


Progress towards practical quantum variational algorithms
journal, October 2015


Chip-to-chip quantum photonic interconnect by path-polarization interconversion
journal, January 2016


Self‐Consistent Molecular‐Orbital Methods. I. Use of Gaussian Expansions of Slater‐Type Atomic Orbitals
journal, September 1969

  • Hehre, W. J.; Stewart, R. F.; Pople, J. A.
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 51, Issue 6
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.1672392

The theory of variational hybrid quantum-classical algorithms
journal, February 2016


Higher order decompositions of ordered operator exponentials
journal, January 2010

  • Wiebe, Nathan; Berry, Dominic; Høyer, Peter
  • Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, Vol. 43, Issue 6
  • DOI: 10.1088/1751-8113/43/6/065203

Solving Quantum Ground-State Problems with Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
journal, September 2011

  • Li, Zhaokai; Yung, Man-Hong; Chen, Hongwei
  • Scientific Reports, Vol. 1, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/srep00088

Adding control to arbitrary unknown quantum operations
journal, August 2011

  • Zhou, Xiao-Qi; Ralph, Timothy C.; Kalasuwan, Pruet
  • Nature Communications, Vol. 2, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1392

Elucidating reaction mechanisms on quantum computers
journal, July 2017

  • Reiher, Markus; Wiebe, Nathan; Svore, Krysta M.
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 114, Issue 29
  • DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1619152114

Calculating the thermal rate constant with exponential speedup on a quantum computer
journal, February 1999


Universal Quantum Simulators
journal, August 1996


Targeting specific eigenvectors and eigenvalues of a given Hamiltonian using arbitrary selection criteria
journal, December 2002


The Complexity of the Local Hamiltonian Problem
journal, January 2006


Note on an Approximation Treatment for Many-Electron Systems
journal, October 1934


Towards quantum chemistry on a quantum computer
journal, January 2010

  • Lanyon, B. P.; Whitfield, J. D.; Gillett, G. G.
  • Nature Chemistry, Vol. 2, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1038/nchem.483

Hardware-efficient variational quantum eigensolver for small molecules and quantum magnets
journal, September 2017

  • Kandala, Abhinav; Mezzacapo, Antonio; Temme, Kristan
  • Nature, Vol. 549, Issue 7671
  • DOI: 10.1038/nature23879

Polarization Entangled State Measurement on a Chip
journal, November 2010


A quantum Fredkin gate
conference, January 2016


Polarization entangled state measurement on a chip
conference, January 2011

  • Sansoni, Linda; Sciarrino, Fabio; Vallone, Giuseppe
  • CLEO: Applications and Technology, CLEO:2011 - Laser Applications to Photonic Applications
  • DOI: 10.1364/cleo_at.2011.jtua4

Adding control to arbitrary unknown quantum operations
text, January 2010


Polarization entangled state measurement on a chip
text, January 2010


Solving Quantum Ground-State Problems with Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
text, January 2011


Chemical Basis of Trotter-Suzuki Errors in Quantum Chemistry Simulation
text, January 2014


Hybrid Quantum-Classical Hierarchy for Mitigation of Decoherence and Determination of Excited States
text, January 2016


A quantum Fredkin gate
text, January 2016


The Complexity of the Local Hamiltonian Problem
text, January 2004


Simulating physics with computers
journal, June 1982

  • Feynman, Richard P.
  • International Journal of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 21, Issue 6-7
  • DOI: 10.1007/bf02650179

The architecture and function of the light-harvesting apparatus of purple bacteria: from single molecules to in vivo membranes
journal, August 2006

  • Cogdell, Richard J.; Gall, Andrew; Köhler, Jürgen
  • Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics, Vol. 39, Issue 3
  • DOI: 10.1017/s0033583506004434

Quantum simulation of the Hubbard model with dopant atoms in silicon
journal, April 2016

  • Salfi, J.; Mol, J. A.; Rahman, R.
  • Nature Communications, Vol. 7, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11342

A variational eigenvalue solver on a photonic quantum processor
journal, July 2014

  • Peruzzo, Alberto; McClean, Jarrod; Shadbolt, Peter
  • Nature Communications, Vol. 5, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5213

Qubit entanglement between ring-resonator photon-pair sources on a silicon chip
journal, August 2015

  • Silverstone, J. W.; Santagati, R.; Bonneau, D.
  • Nature Communications, Vol. 6, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8948

Photonic simulation of entanglement growth and engineering after a spin chain quench
journal, November 2017


Solving Quantum Ground-State Problems with Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
journal, September 2011

  • Li, Zhaokai; Yung, Man-Hong; Chen, Hongwei
  • Scientific Reports, Vol. 1, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/srep00088

Elucidating reaction mechanisms on quantum computers
journal, July 2017

  • Reiher, Markus; Wiebe, Nathan; Svore, Krysta M.
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 114, Issue 29
  • DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1619152114

Exponentially more precise quantum simulation of fermions in second quantization
journal, March 2016


Strategies for quantum computing molecular energies using the unitary coupled cluster ansatz
journal, October 2018

  • Romero, Jonathan; Babbush, Ryan; McClean, Jarrod R.
  • Quantum Science and Technology, Vol. 4, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1088/2058-9565/aad3e4

Transition state theory can be used in studies of enzyme catalysis: lessons from simulations of tunnelling and dynamical effects in lipoxygenase and other systems
journal, July 2006

  • Olsson, Mats H. M.; Mavri, Janez; Warshel, Arieh
  • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Vol. 361, Issue 1472
  • DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2006.1880

Natural Orbitals in the Quantum Theory of Two-Electron Systems
journal, March 1956


Arbitrary accuracy iterative quantum phase estimation algorithm using a single ancillary qubit: A two-qubit benchmark
journal, September 2007


Genetic Algorithms for Digital Quantum Simulations
journal, June 2016


Experimental Bayesian Quantum Phase Estimation on a Silicon Photonic Chip
journal, March 2017


Limitations of Quantum Simulation Examined by Simulating a Pairing Hamiltonian Using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
journal, August 2006


Simulated Quantum Computation of Molecular Energies
journal, September 2005


Universal Quantum Simulators
journal, August 1996


Machine learning for quantum physics
journal, February 2017


On the stability of sequential Monte Carlo methods in high dimensions
journal, August 2014

  • Beskos, Alexandros; Crisan, Dan; Jasra, Ajay
  • The Annals of Applied Probability, Vol. 24, Issue 4
  • DOI: 10.1214/13-aap951

Generation of correlated photons in nanoscale silicon waveguides
journal, January 2006

  • Sharping, Jay E.; Lee, Kim F.; Foster, Mark A.
  • Optics Express, Vol. 14, Issue 25
  • DOI: 10.1364/oe.14.012388

Micrometer-scale integrated silicon source of time-energy entangled photons
journal, January 2015


Adding control to arbitrary unknown quantum operations
text, January 2010


Quantum simulation of the wavefunction to probe frustrated Heisenberg spin systems
text, January 2010


Polarization entangled state measurement on a chip
text, January 2010


Hybrid Quantum-Classical Hierarchy for Mitigation of Decoherence and Determination of Excited States
text, January 2016


A quantum Fredkin gate
text, January 2016


Practical optimization for hybrid quantum-classical algorithms
preprint, January 2017


Hardware-efficient Variational Quantum Eigensolver for Small Molecules and Quantum Magnets
text, January 2017


Robust determination of molecular spectra on a quantum processor
text, January 2017


Silicon photonic processor of two-qubit entangling quantum logic
text, January 2017


Silicon photonic processor of two-qubit entangling quantum logic
dataset, January 2017


Experimental_Data_arxiv_1611.03511
dataset, January 2017


Simulations_Data_arxiv_1611.03511
dataset, January 2017


Works referencing / citing this record:

Variational Quantum Simulation for Quantum Chemistry
journal, January 2019

  • Li, Yifan; Hu, Jiaqi; Zhang, Xiao‐Ming
  • Advanced Theory and Simulations, Vol. 2, Issue 4
  • DOI: 10.1002/adts.201800182

High‐Dimensional Quantum Communication: Benefits, Progress, and Future Challenges
journal, October 2019

  • Cozzolino, Daniele; Da Lio, Beatrice; Bacco, Davide
  • Advanced Quantum Technologies, Vol. 2, Issue 12
  • DOI: 10.1002/qute.201900038

Barren plateaus in quantum neural network training landscapes
journal, November 2018


Decoding quantum errors with subspace expansions
journal, January 2020


Calculating energy derivatives for quantum chemistry on a quantum computer
journal, December 2019

  • O’Brien, Thomas E.; Senjean, Bruno; Sagastizabal, Ramiro
  • npj Quantum Information, Vol. 5, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/s41534-019-0213-4

Generation of non-classical light in a photon-number superposition
journal, August 2019


Integrated photonic quantum technologies
journal, October 2019


Self-verifying variational quantum simulation of lattice models
journal, May 2019


Photonic quantum information processing: A concise review
journal, December 2019

  • Slussarenko, Sergei; Pryde, Geoff J.
  • Applied Physics Reviews, Vol. 6, Issue 4
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.5115814

Quantum experiments and graphs II: Quantum interference, computation, and state generation
journal, February 2019

  • Gu, Xuemei; Erhard, Manuel; Zeilinger, Anton
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 116, Issue 10
  • DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1815884116

Photonic quantum information processing: a review
journal, November 2018

  • Flamini, Fulvio; Spagnolo, Nicolò; Sciarrino, Fabio
  • Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 82, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1088/1361-6633/aad5b2

Application of fermionic marginal constraints to hybrid quantum algorithms
journal, May 2018

  • Rubin, Nicholas C.; Babbush, Ryan; McClean, Jarrod
  • New Journal of Physics, Vol. 20, Issue 5
  • DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/aab919

Quantum phase estimation of multiple eigenvalues for small-scale (noisy) experiments
journal, February 2019

  • O’Brien, Thomas E.; Tarasinski, Brian; Terhal, Barbara M.
  • New Journal of Physics, Vol. 21, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/aafb8e

Experimental error mitigation via symmetry verification in a variational quantum eigensolver
journal, July 2019


Simulations of subatomic many-body physics on a quantum frequency processor
journal, July 2019


Construction of Green's functions on a quantum computer: Quasiparticle spectra of molecules
journal, January 2020


Quantum-classical computation of Schwinger model dynamics using quantum computers
journal, September 2018


Variational quantum algorithms for discovering Hamiltonian spectra
journal, June 2019


Quantum Simulation of Electronic Structure with Linear Depth and Connectivity
journal, March 2018


Quantum Computation of Electronic Transitions Using a Variational Quantum Eigensolver
journal, June 2019


Contextuality Test of the Nonclassicality of Variational Quantum Eigensolvers
journal, November 2019


Subspace-search variational quantum eigensolver for excited states
journal, October 2019


Increasing the Representation Accuracy of Quantum Simulations of Chemistry without Extra Quantum Resources
journal, January 2020


Low-Depth Quantum Simulation of Materials
journal, March 2018


Quantum computational chemistry
journal, March 2020


Multidimensional quantum entanglement with large-scale integrated optics
journal, March 2018


Photonic scheme of quantum phase estimation for quantum algorithms via cross-Kerr nonlinearities under decoherence effect
journal, January 2019

  • Hong, Changho; Heo, Jino; Kang, Min-Sung
  • Optics Express, Vol. 27, Issue 21
  • DOI: 10.1364/oe.27.031023

Variational Quantum Computation of Excited States
journal, July 2019


Theory of variational quantum simulation
journal, October 2019


Photonic quantum information processing: a review
text, January 2018


Quantum-Classical Computation of Schwinger Model Dynamics using Quantum Computers
text, January 2018


Variational Quantum Computation of Excited States
text, January 2018


Variational quantum algorithms for discovering Hamiltonian spectra
text, January 2018


Quantum computational chemistry
text, January 2018


Quantum phase estimation of multiple eigenvalues for small-scale (noisy) experiments
text, January 2018


Simulations of Subatomic Many-Body Physics on a Quantum Frequency Processor
text, January 2018


Generation of non-classical light in a photon-number superposition
text, January 2018


Quantum Computation of Electronic Transitions using a Variational Quantum Eigensolver
text, January 2019


Decoding quantum errors with subspace expansions
text, January 2019


Calculating energy derivatives for quantum chemistry on a quantum computer
text, January 2019


High-dimensional quantum communication: benefits, progress, and future challenges
text, January 2019


Barren plateaus in quantum neural network training landscapes
journal, November 2018


Decoding quantum errors with subspace expansions
text, January 2019


Bayesian Quantum Multiphase Estimation Algorithm
text, January 2020


Figures/Tables have been extracted from DOE-funded journal article accepted manuscripts.