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Main Authors: Huang, Rick, Izmaylov, Artur F.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14917
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author Huang, Rick
Izmaylov, Artur F.
author_facet Huang, Rick
Izmaylov, Artur F.
contents Adaptive variational algorithms suffer from prohibitively high measurement costs during the generator selection step, since energy gradients must be estimated for a large operator pool. This scaling bottleneck limits their applicability to larger molecular systems on near-term quantum devices. We address this challenge by reformulating generator selection as a Best Arm Identification (BAI) problem, where the goal is to identify the generator with the largest energy gradient using as few measurements as possible. To solve it, we employ the Successive Elimination algorithm, which adaptively allocates measurements and discards unpromising candidates early. Numerical experiments on molecular systems demonstrate that this approach substantially reduces the number of measurements required while preserving ground-state energy accuracy. By cutting measurement overhead without sacrificing performance, our method makes adaptive variational algorithms more practical for near-term quantum simulations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_14917
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Quantum Gambling: Best-Arm Strategies for Generator Selection in Adaptive Variational Algorithms
Huang, Rick
Izmaylov, Artur F.
Quantum Physics
Chemical Physics
Adaptive variational algorithms suffer from prohibitively high measurement costs during the generator selection step, since energy gradients must be estimated for a large operator pool. This scaling bottleneck limits their applicability to larger molecular systems on near-term quantum devices. We address this challenge by reformulating generator selection as a Best Arm Identification (BAI) problem, where the goal is to identify the generator with the largest energy gradient using as few measurements as possible. To solve it, we employ the Successive Elimination algorithm, which adaptively allocates measurements and discards unpromising candidates early. Numerical experiments on molecular systems demonstrate that this approach substantially reduces the number of measurements required while preserving ground-state energy accuracy. By cutting measurement overhead without sacrificing performance, our method makes adaptive variational algorithms more practical for near-term quantum simulations.
title Quantum Gambling: Best-Arm Strategies for Generator Selection in Adaptive Variational Algorithms
topic Quantum Physics
Chemical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14917