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Autori principali: Carolan, Eoin, Keenan, Nathan, Cenedese, Gabriele, Benenti, Giuliano
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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Accesso online:https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20881
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author Carolan, Eoin
Keenan, Nathan
Cenedese, Gabriele
Benenti, Giuliano
author_facet Carolan, Eoin
Keenan, Nathan
Cenedese, Gabriele
Benenti, Giuliano
contents We present and benchmark a type of variational quantum eigensolver (VQE), which we denote $σ$-VQE. It is designed to target mid-spectrum eigenstates and prepare quantum many-body scar states. The approach leverages the fact that noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices are limited in their ability to generate generic highly entangled states. This modified VQE pairs a low-depth circuit with an energy-selective objective that explicitly penalizes energy variance around a chosen target energy. The cost function exploits the limited expressibility of the shallow circuit as atypical low-entanglement eigenstates such as scar states are preferentially selected. We validate this mechanism across two complementary families of models that contain many-body scar states: the Shiraishi-Mori embedding approach and a matrix product state parent Hamiltonian construction. We define an unbiased estimation scheme for the nonlinear cost function that is compatible with qubit-wise commuting grouping and bitstring reuse. A proof-of-principle demonstration using a small-system instance was performed on IBM Fez (Heron r2 QPU). These results motivate its use as a practical algorithm for detecting quantum many-body scars and variationally generating states with appreciable scar state overlap.
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spellingShingle $σ$-VQE: Excited-state preparation of quantum many-body scars with shallow circuits
Carolan, Eoin
Keenan, Nathan
Cenedese, Gabriele
Benenti, Giuliano
Quantum Physics
We present and benchmark a type of variational quantum eigensolver (VQE), which we denote $σ$-VQE. It is designed to target mid-spectrum eigenstates and prepare quantum many-body scar states. The approach leverages the fact that noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices are limited in their ability to generate generic highly entangled states. This modified VQE pairs a low-depth circuit with an energy-selective objective that explicitly penalizes energy variance around a chosen target energy. The cost function exploits the limited expressibility of the shallow circuit as atypical low-entanglement eigenstates such as scar states are preferentially selected. We validate this mechanism across two complementary families of models that contain many-body scar states: the Shiraishi-Mori embedding approach and a matrix product state parent Hamiltonian construction. We define an unbiased estimation scheme for the nonlinear cost function that is compatible with qubit-wise commuting grouping and bitstring reuse. A proof-of-principle demonstration using a small-system instance was performed on IBM Fez (Heron r2 QPU). These results motivate its use as a practical algorithm for detecting quantum many-body scars and variationally generating states with appreciable scar state overlap.
title $σ$-VQE: Excited-state preparation of quantum many-body scars with shallow circuits
topic Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20881