78 pages, 18 figures. After announcing these results we found that similar results were achieved independently by Watson and Cubitt; they are posted simultaneously on the arXiv
Despite progress in quantum Hamiltonian complexity, little is known about the computational complexity of quantum physics at the thermodynamic limit. Even defining the problem is not straight forward. We study the complexity of estimating the ground energy of a fixed, translationally invariant Hamiltonian in the thermodynamic limit, to within a given precision; the number of bits $n$ for the precision is the sole input to the problem. The complexity of this problem captures how difficult it is for the physicist to measure or compute another digit in the approximation of a physical quantity in the thermodynamic limit. We show that this problem is contained in $\mbox{FEXP}^{\mbox{QMA-EXP}}$ and is hard for $\mbox{FEXP}^{\mbox{NEXP}}$. This means that the problem is doubly exponentially hard in the size of the input. As an ingredient in our construction, we study the problem of computing the ground energy of translationally invariant finite 1D chains. A single Hamiltonian term, which is a fixed parameter of the problem, is applied to every pair of particles in a finite chain. The length of the chain is the sole input to the problem and the task is to compute an approximation of the ground energy. No thresholds are provided as in the standard formulation of the local Hamiltonian problem. We show that this problem is contained in $\mbox{FP}^{\mbox{QMA-EXP}}$ and is hard for $\mbox{FP}^{\mbox{NEXP}}$. Our techniques employ a circular clock in which the ground energy is calibrated by the length of the cycle. This requires more precise expressions for the ground states of the resulting matrices than was required for previous QMA-completeness constructions and even exact analytical bounds for the infinite case which we derive using techniques from spectral graph theory. To our knowledge, this is the first use of the circuit-to-Hamiltonian construction which shows hardness for a function class.
It is often claimed, that from a quantum system of d levels, and entropy S and heat bath of temperature T one can draw kT(ln d -S) amount of work. However, the usual arguments based on Szilard engine are not fully rigorous. Here we prove the formula within Hamiltonian description of drawing work from a quantum system and a heat bath, at a cost of entropy of the system. We base on the derivation of thermodynamical laws and quantities in [R. Alicki, J. Phys. A, 12, L103 (1979)] within a weak coupling limit. Our result provides fully physical scenario for extracting thermodynamical work from quan…
There are many ways to decompose the Hilbert space H of a composite quantum system into tensor product subspaces. Different subsystem decompositions generally imply different interaction Hamiltonians V, and therefore different expectation values for subsystem observables. This means that thE uniqueness of physical predictions is not guaranteed, despite the uniqueness of the total Hamiltonian H and the total Hilbert space. Here we use Clausius' version of the second law of thermodynamics (CSL) and standard identifications of thermodynamic quantities to identify possible subsystem decompositions…
We present results concerning aspects of quantum thermodynamics under the background of non-Hermitian quantum mechanics for the dynamics of a quantum harmonic oscillator. Since a better control over the parameters in quantum thermodynamics processes is desired, we use concepts from collisional model to introduce a simple prototype of thermal reservoir based on $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric Hamiltonians and study its effects under the thermalization process of a single harmonic oscillator prepared in a displaced thermal state. We verify that controlling the $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric features of the r…
Why time is a one-way corridor? What's the origin of the arrow of time? We attribute the thermodynamic arrow of time as the direction of increasing quantum state complexity. Inspired by the work of Nielsen, Susskind and Micadei, we checked this hypothesis on both a simple two qubit and a three qubit quantum system. The result shows that in the two qubit system, the thermodynamic arrow of time always points in the direction of increasing quantum state complexity. For the three qubit system, the heat flow pattern among subsystems is closely correlated with the quantum state complexity of the sub…
The nonequilibrium thermodynamics of an open (classical or quantum) system in strong contact with a single heat bath can be conveniently described in terms of the Hamiltonian of mean force. However, the conventional formulation is limited by the necessity to measure differences in equilibrium properties of the system-bath composite. We make use of the freedom involved in defining thermodynamic quantities, which leaves the thermodynamics unchanged, to show that the Hamiltonian of mean force can be inferred from measurements on the system alone, up to that irrelevant freedom. In doing so, we ref…
We develop the strong coupling quantum thermodynamics based on the solution of the exact master equation. We find that both the Hamiltonian and the temperature must be renormalized due to the system-reservoir couplings. With the renormalized Hamiltonian and temperature, the exact steady state of open quantum systems can be expressed as a standard Gibbs state. The exact steady-state particle distributions obey the Bose-Einstein distribution or the Fermi-Dirac distribution only for the renormalized energy and temperature. In this formulation, heat and work are quantum mechanically defined, from …
This paper introduces a new formalism for quantum cellular automata (QCAs), based on evolving tensor products of qubits using local unitary operators. It subsequently uses this formalism to analyze and validate several conjectures, stemming from a formal analogy between quantum computational complexity theory and classical thermodynamics, that have arisen recently in the context of black hole physics. In particular, the apparent resonance and thermalization effects present within such QCAs are investigated, and it is demonstrated that the expected exponential relationships between the quantum …
We use an n-spin system with permutation symmetric zz-interaction for simulating arbitrary pair-interaction Hamiltonians. The calculation of the required time overhead is mathematically equivalent to a separability problem of n-qubit density matrices. We derive lower and upper bounds in terms of chromatic index and the spectrum of the interaction graph. The complexity measure defined by such a computational model is related to gate complexity and a continuous complexity measure introduced in a former paper. We use majorization of graph spectra for classifying Hamiltonians with respect to their…
We consider the computational complexity of Hamiltonians which are sums of commuting terms acting on plaquettes in a square lattice of qubits, and we show that deciding whether the ground state minimizes the energy of each local term individually is in the complexity class NP. That is, if the ground states has this property, this can be proven using a classical certificate which can be efficiently verified on a classical computer. Different to previous results on commuting Hamiltonians, our certificate proves the existence of such a state without giving instructions on how to prepare it.
Quantum systems driven by time-dependent Hamiltonians are considered here within the framework of steepest-entropy-ascent quantum thermodynamics (SEAQT) and used to study the thermodynamic characteristics of such systems. In doing so, a generalization of the SEAQT framework valid for all such systems is provided, leading to the development of an ab initio physically relevant expression for the intra-relaxation time, an important element of this framework and one that had as of yet not been uniquely determined as an integral part of the theory. The resulting expression for the relaxation time i…
We study complexity of several problems related to the Transverse field Ising Model (TIM). First, we consider the problem of estimating the ground state energy known as the Local Hamiltonian Problem (LHP). It is shown that the LHP for TIM on degree-3 graphs is equivalent modulo polynomial reductions to the LHP for general k-local `stoquastic' Hamiltonians with any constant $k\ge 2$. This result implies that estimating the ground state energy of TIM on degree-3 graphs is a complete problem for the complexity class StoqMA - an extension of the classical class MA. As a corollary, we complete the …
Quantum Hamiltonian identification is important for characterizing the dynamics of quantum systems, calibrating quantum devices and achieving precise quantum control. In this paper, an effective two-step optimization (TSO) quantum Hamiltonian identification algorithm is developed within the framework of quantum process tomography. In the identification method, different probe states are inputted into quantum systems and the output states are estimated using the quantum state tomography protocol via linear regression estimation. The time-independent system Hamiltonian is reconstructed based on …
We study the complexity of the Local Hamiltonian Problem (denoted as LH-MIN) in the special case when a Hamiltonian obeys conditions of the Perron-Frobenius theorem: all off-diagonal matrix elements in the standard basis are real and non-positive. We will call such Hamiltonians, which are common in the natural world, stoquastic. An equivalent characterization of stoquastic Hamiltonians is that they have an entry-wise non-negative Gibbs density matrix for any temperature. We prove that LH-MIN for stoquastic Hamiltonians belongs to the complexity class AM -- a probabilistic version of NP with tw…
Information Processing in Quantum Thermodynamic Systems: an Autonomous Hamiltonian Approach
University of Massachusetts, Boston（马萨诸塞大学波士顿分校）；Los Alamos National Laboratory（洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室）；University of Maryland, Baltimore County（马里兰大学巴尔的摩分校）；Quantum Science Institute, University of Maryland, Baltimore County（马里兰大学巴尔的摩分校量子科学研究所）
Recent work has demonstrated the existence of universal Hamiltonians - simple spin lattice models that can simulate any other quantum many body system to any desired level of accuracy. Until now proofs of universality have relied on explicit constructions, tailored to each specific family of universal Hamiltonians. In this work we go beyond this approach, and completely classify the simulation ability of quantum Hamiltonians by their complexity classes. We do this by deriving necessary and sufficient complexity theoretic conditions characterising universal quantum Hamiltonians. Although the re…
We investigate the sample complexity of Hamiltonian simulation: how many copies of an unknown quantum state are required to simulate a Hamiltonian encoded by the density matrix of that state? We show that the procedure proposed by Lloyd, Mohseni, and Rebentrost [Nat. Phys., 10(9):631--633, 2014] is optimal for this task. We further extend their method to the case of multiple input states, showing how to simulate any Hermitian polynomial of the states provided. As applications, we derive optimal algorithms for commutator simulation and orthogonality testing, and we give a protocol for creating …
Noncommuting conserved quantities have recently launched a subfield of quantum thermodynamics. In conventional thermodynamics, a system of interest and an environment exchange quantities -- energy, particles, electric charge, etc. -- that are globally conserved and are represented by Hermitian operators. These operators were implicitly assumed to commute with each other, until a few years ago. Freeing the operators to fail to commute has enabled many theoretical discoveries -- about reference frames, entropy production, resource-theory models, etc. Little work has bridged these results from ab…
In recent years we've seen the birth of a new field known as hamiltonian complexity lying at the crossroads between computer science and theoretical physics. Hamiltonian complexity is directly concerned with the question: how hard is it to simulate a physical system? Here I review the foundational results, guiding problems, and future directions of this emergent field.
Operational quantum stochastic thermodynamics is a recently proposed theory to study the thermodynamics of open systems based on the rigorous notion of a quantum stochastic process or quantum causal model. In there, a stochastic trajectory is defined solely in terms of experimentally accessible measurement results, which serve as the basis to define the corresponding thermodynamic quantities. In contrast to this observer-dependent point of view, a `black box', which evolves unitarily and can simulate a quantum causal model, is constructed here. The quantum thermodynamics of this big isolated s…
We investigate further the relationship between the entanglement spectrum of a composite many-body system and the energy spectrum of a subsystem making use of concepts of canonical thermodynamics. In many important cases the entanglement Hamiltonian is, in the limit of strong coupling between subsystems, proportional to the energy Hamiltonian of the subsystem. The proportionality factor is an appropriately defined coupling parameter, suggesting to interpret the latter as a inverse temperature. We identify a condition on the entanglement Hamiltonian which rigorously guarantees this interpretati…
We propose how to compute the complexity of operators generated by Hamiltonians in quantum field theory (QFT) and quantum mechanics (QM). The Hamiltonians in QFT/QM and quantum circuit have a few essential differences, for which we introduce new principles and methods for complexity. We show that the complexity geometry corresponding to one-dimensional quadratic Hamiltonians is equivalent to AdS$_3$ spacetime. Here, the requirement that the complexity is nonnegative corresponds to the fact that the Hamiltonian is lower bounded and the speed of a particle is not superluminal. Our proposal prove…
Non-Hermitian Hamiltonians possessing a discrete real spectrum motivated a remarkable research activity in quantum physics and new insights have emerged. In this paper we formulate concepts of statistical thermodynamics for systems described by non-Hermitian Hamiltonians with real eigenvalues. We mainly focus on the case where the energy and another observable are the conserved quantities. The notion of entropy and entropy inequalities are central in our approach, which treats equilibrium thermodynamics.
We elucidate the distinction between global and termwise stoquasticity for local Hamiltonians and prove several complexity results. We show that the stoquastic local Hamiltonian problem is $\textbf{StoqMA}$-complete even for globally stoquastic Hamiltonians. We study the complexity of deciding whether a local Hamiltonian is globally stoquastic or not. In particular, we prove $\textbf{coNP}$-hardness of deciding global stoquasticity in a fixed basis and $Σ_2^p$-hardness of deciding global stoquasticity under single-qubit transformations. As a last result, we expand the class of sign-curing tran…
Center for Gravitational Physics and Quantum Information, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University（京都大学汤川理论物理中心引力物理与量子信息）；Department of Physics, Kyoto University（京都大学物理学系）
We classify two-qubit commuting Hamiltonians in terms of their computational complexity. Suppose one has a two-qubit commuting Hamiltonian H which one can apply to any pair of qubits, starting in a computational basis state. We prove a dichotomy theorem: either this model is efficiently classically simulable or it allows one to sample from probability distributions which cannot be sampled from classically unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses. Furthermore, the only simulable Hamiltonians are those which fail to generate entanglement. This shows that generic two-qubit commuting Hamiltonians…
We prove that 2-Local Hamiltonian (2-LH) with Low Complexity problem is QCMA-complete by combining the results from the QMA-completeness[4] of 2-LH and QCMA-completeness of 3-LH with Low Complexity[6]. The idea is straightforward. It has been known that 2-LH is QMA-complete. By putting a low complexity constraint on the input state, we make the problem QCMA. Finally, we use similar arguments as in [4] to show that all QCMA problems can be reduced to our proposed problem.
The fabrication, utilisation, and efficiency of quantum technologies rely on a good understanding of quantum thermodynamic properties. Many-body systems are often used as hardware for these quantum devices, but interactions between particles make the complexity of related calculations grow exponentially with the system size. Here we explore and systematically compare `simple' and `hybrid' approximations to the average work and entropy variation built on static density functional theory concepts. These approximations are computationally cheap and could be applied to large systems. We exemplify …
In this paper, we will analyze the connection between the fidelity susceptibility, the holographic complexity and the thermodynamic volume. We will regularize the fidelity susceptibility and the holographic complexity by subtracting the contribution of the background AdS spacetime from the deformation of the AdS spacetime. It will be demonstrated that this regularized fidelity susceptibility has the same behavior as the thermodynamic volume and that the regularized complexity has a very different behavior. As the information dual to different volumes in the bulk would be measured by the fideli…
In this paper, we study variants of the canonical Local-Hamiltonian problem where, in addition, the witness is promised to be separable. We define two variants of the Local-Hamiltonian problem. The input for the Separable-Local-Hamiltonian problem is the same as the Local-Hamiltonian problem, i.e. a local Hamiltonian and two energies a and b, but the question is somewhat different: the answer is YES if there is a separable quantum state with energy at most a, and the answer is NO if all separable quantum states have energy at least b. The Separable-Sparse-Hamiltonian problem is defined similar…
We present an argument which purports to show that the use of the standard Legendre transform in non-additive Statistical Mechanics is not appropriate. For concreteness, we use as paradigm, the case of systems which are conjecturally described by the (non-additive) Tsallis entropy. We point out the form of the modified Legendre transform that should be used, instead, in the non-additive thermodynamics induced by the Tsallis entropy. We comment on more general implications of this proposal for the thermodynamics of "complex systems".
Many organisms capitalize on their ability to predict the environment to maximize available free energy, and reinvest this energy to create new complex structures. This functionality relies on the manipulation of patterns - temporally ordered sequences of data. Here, we propose a framework to describe pattern manipulators -- devices that convert thermodynamic work to patterns or vice versa - and use them to build a 'pattern engine' that facilitates a thermodynamic cycle of pattern creation and consumption. We show that the least heat dissipation is achieved by the provably simplest devices; th…
Quantum Hamiltonian complexity studies computational complexity aspects of local Hamiltonians and ground states; these questions can be viewed as generalizations of classical computational complexity problems related to local constraint satisfaction (such as SAT), with the additional ingredient of multi-particle entanglement. This additional ingredient of course makes generalizations of celebrated theorems such as the PCP theorem from classical to the quantum domain highly non-trivial; it also raises entirely new questions such as bounds on entanglement and correlations in ground states, and i…
The k-local Hamiltonian problem is a natural complete problem for the complexity class QMA, the quantum analog of NP. It is similar in spirit to MAX-k-SAT, which is NP-complete for k<=2. It was known that the problem is QMA-complete for any k <= 3. On the other hand 1-local Hamiltonian is in P, and hence not believed to be QMA-complete. The complexity of the 2-local Hamiltonian problem has long been outstanding. Here we settle the question and show that it is QMA-complete. We provide two independent proofs; our first proof uses only elementary linear algebra. Our second proof uses a powerful t…
By solving the exact master equation of open quantum systems, we formulate the quantum thermodynamics from weak to strong couplings. The open quantum systems exchange matters, energies and information with their reservoirs through quantum particles tunnelings that are described by the generalized Fano-Anderson Hamiltonians. We find that the exact solution of the reduced density matrix of these systems approaches a Gibbs-type state in the steady-state limit for both the weak and strong system-reservoir coupling strengths. When the couplings become strong, thermodynamic quantities of the system …
Using exact diagonalization and tensor network techniques we compute the gap for the AKLT Hamiltonian in 1D and 2D spatial dimensions. Tensor Network methods are used to extract physical properties directly in the thermodynamic limit, and we support these results using finite-size scalings from exact diagonalization. Studying the AKLT Hamiltonian perturbed by an external field, we show how to obtain an accurate value of the gap of the original AKLT Hamiltonian from the field value at which the ground state verifies e_0<0, which is a quantum critical point. With the Tensor Network Renormalizati…
We define a diagonal entropy (d-entropy) for an arbitrary Hamiltonian system as $S_d=-\sum_n ρ_{nn}\ln ρ_{nn}$ with the sum taken over the basis of instantaneous energy states. In equilibrium this entropy coincides with the conventional von Neumann entropy $S_n=-{\rm Tr}\, ρ\lnρ$. However, in contrast to $S_n$, the d-entropy is not conserved in time in closed Hamiltonian systems. If the system is initially in stationary state then in accord with the second law of thermodynamics the d-entropy can only increase or stay the same. We also show that the d-entropy can be expressed through the energy…
We consider a family of chaotic Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonians (BHH) parameterized by the coupling strength $k$ between neighboring sites. As $k$ increases the eigenstates undergo changes, reflected in the structure of the Local Density of States. We analyze these changes, both numerically and analytically, using perturbative and semiclassical methods. Although our focus is on the quantum trimer, the presented methodology is applicable for the analysis of longer lattices as well.
Thermodynamics of Hamiltonian anyons with applications to quantum heat engines
University of Exeter（埃克塞特大学）；Universidad de Granada（格拉纳达大学）；Instituto Carlos I de Física Teórica y Computacional, Universidad de Granada（格拉纳达大学卡洛斯一世理论与计算物理研究所）
We study Hofstadter bilayers, i.e. coupled hopping models on two-dimensional square lattices in a perpendicular magnetic field. Upon tracing out one of the layers, we find an explicit expression for the resulting entanglement spectrum in terms of the energy eigenvalues of the underlying monolayer system. For strongly coupled layers the entanglement Hamiltonian is proportional to the energetic Hamiltonian of the monolayer system. The proportionality factor, however, cannot be interpreted as the inverse thermodynamic temperature, but represents a phenomenological temperature scale. We derive an …
Department of Physics, Sharif University of Technology（谢里夫理工大学物理系）；Research Center for High Energy Physics, Department of Physics, Sharif University of Technology（谢里夫理工大学物理系高能物理研究中心）
