Unitary Partitioning Approach to the Measurement Problem in the Variational Quantum Eigensolver Method

Nov 20, 2019
6 pages
Published in:
  • J.Chem.Theor.Comput. 16 (2019) 1, 190-195
  • Published: Nov 20, 2019

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Abstract: (ACS)
To obtain estimates of electronic energies, the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) technique performs separate measurements for multiple parts of the system Hamiltonian. Current quantum hardware is restricted to projective single-qubit measurements, and, thus, only parts of the Hamiltonian that form mutually qubit-wise commuting groups can be measured simultaneously. The number of such groups in the electronic structure Hamiltonians grows as N4, where N is the number of qubits, thereby putting serious restrictions on the size of the systems that can be studied. Using a partitioning of the system Hamiltonian as a linear combination of unitary operators, we found a circuit formulation of the VQE algorithm that allows one to measure a group of fully anticommuting terms of the Hamiltonian in a single series of single-qubit measurements. Numerical comparison of the unitary partitioning to previously used grouping of Hamiltonian terms based on their qubit-wise commutativity is consistent with an N-fold reduction in the number of measurable groups.
  • Algorithms
  • Circuits
  • Hamiltonians
  • Mathematical methods
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  • unitarity: operator
  • Hamiltonian
  • variational quantum eigensolver
  • measurement theory
  • mathematical methods