Title: Adaptive Variational Approach for Quantum Simulations

Speaker: Dr. Niladri Gomes, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley

Abstract: We propose a general-purpose, self-adaptive approach to construct variational wavefunction ansatze for highly accurate quantum dynamics and imaginary time simulations based on McLachlan's variational principle. The key idea is to dynamically expand the variational ansatz along the time-evolution path such that the “McLachlan distance”, which is a measure of the simulation accuracy, remains below a set threshold. We deploy the adaptive variational imaginary time evolution (AVQITE) to prepare ground states of , and molecules, where it yields compact variational ansatze and ground state energies within chemical accuracy. Finally, we also apply this adaptive variational quantum dynamics simulation (AVQDS) approach to the nonintegrable mixed-field Ising model, where it captures both finite-rate and sudden post-quench dynamics with high fidelity. The AVQDS quantum circuits that prepare the time-evolved state are much shallower than those obtained from first-order Trotterization and contain up to two orders of magnitude fewer CNOT gate operations. We envision that a wide range of dynamical and ground state simulations of quantum many-body systems on near-term quantum computing devices will be made possible through the adaptive framework.