paper

How to simulate quantum measurement without computing marginals

arXiv:2112.08499 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.220503

Abstract

We describe and analyze algorithms for classically simulating measurement of an -qubit quantum state in the standard basis, that is, sampling a bit string from the probability distribution . Our algorithms reduce the sampling task to computing poly amplitudes of -qubit states; unlike previously known techniques they do not require computation of marginal probabilities. First we consider the case where is the output state of an -gate quantum circuit . We propose an exact sampling algorithm which involves computing amplitudes of -qubit states generated by subcircuits of spanned by the first gates. We show that our algorithm can significantly accelerate quantum circuit simulations based on tensor network contraction methods or low-rank stabilizer decompositions. As another striking consequence we obtain an efficient classical simulation algorithm for measurement-based quantum computation with the surface code resource state on any planar graph, generalizing a previous algorithm which was known to be efficient only under restrictive topological constraints on the ordering of single-qubit measurements. Second, we consider the case in which is the unique ground state of a local Hamiltonian with a spectral gap that is lower bounded by an inverse polynomial function of . We prove that a simple Metropolis-Hastings Markov Chain mixes rapidly to the desired probability distribution provided that obeys a certain technical condition, which we show is satisfied for all sign-problem free Hamiltonians. This gives a sampling algorithm which involves computing amplitudes of .

arXiv commentIn v2 we have redone the tensor network circuit simulations using the "dynamic slicing" setting in CoTenGra as suggested to us by Johnnie Gray

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