Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chen, Hongrui, Jiang, Jiaqing, Li, Bowen, Ying, Lexing
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.21595
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914617302712320
author Chen, Hongrui
Jiang, Jiaqing
Li, Bowen
Ying, Lexing
author_facet Chen, Hongrui
Jiang, Jiaqing
Li, Bowen
Ying, Lexing
contents Estimating thermal expectation values of quantum many-body systems is a central challenge in physics, chemistry, and materials science. Standard quantum Gibbs sampling protocols address this task by preparing the Gibbs state from scratch after every measurement, incurring a full mixing time cost at each step. Recent advances in single-trajectory Gibbs sampling [Jiang et al. 2026] substantially reduce this overhead: once stationarity is reached, measurements can be collected along a single trajectory without re-thermalizing, provided the measurement channel preserves the Gibbs ensemble. However, explicit constructions of such non-destructive measurements have been limited primarily to observables that commute with the Hamiltonian. In this work, we fundamentally extend the single-trajectory framework to arbitrary, non-commuting observables. We provide two measurement constructions that extract measurement information without fully destroying the Gibbs state, thereby eliminating the need for full re-mixing between samples. First, we construct a measurement that satisfies exact detailed balance. This ensures the system remains in equilibrium throughout the trajectory, allowing measurement outcomes to decorrelate in an autocorrelation time that could be significantly shorter than the global mixing time. Second, assuming the underlying quantum Gibbs sampler has a positive spectral gap, we design a simplified measurement scheme that ensures the post-selected state serves as a warm start for rapid re-mixing. This approach successfully decouples the resampling cost from the global mixing time. Both measurement schemes admit efficient quantum circuit implementations, requiring only polylogarithmic Hamiltonian simulation time.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_21595
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Thermal expectation estimation via single-trajectory Gibbs sampling with non-destructive measurements
Chen, Hongrui
Jiang, Jiaqing
Li, Bowen
Ying, Lexing
Quantum Physics
Mathematical Physics
Estimating thermal expectation values of quantum many-body systems is a central challenge in physics, chemistry, and materials science. Standard quantum Gibbs sampling protocols address this task by preparing the Gibbs state from scratch after every measurement, incurring a full mixing time cost at each step. Recent advances in single-trajectory Gibbs sampling [Jiang et al. 2026] substantially reduce this overhead: once stationarity is reached, measurements can be collected along a single trajectory without re-thermalizing, provided the measurement channel preserves the Gibbs ensemble. However, explicit constructions of such non-destructive measurements have been limited primarily to observables that commute with the Hamiltonian. In this work, we fundamentally extend the single-trajectory framework to arbitrary, non-commuting observables. We provide two measurement constructions that extract measurement information without fully destroying the Gibbs state, thereby eliminating the need for full re-mixing between samples. First, we construct a measurement that satisfies exact detailed balance. This ensures the system remains in equilibrium throughout the trajectory, allowing measurement outcomes to decorrelate in an autocorrelation time that could be significantly shorter than the global mixing time. Second, assuming the underlying quantum Gibbs sampler has a positive spectral gap, we design a simplified measurement scheme that ensures the post-selected state serves as a warm start for rapid re-mixing. This approach successfully decouples the resampling cost from the global mixing time. Both measurement schemes admit efficient quantum circuit implementations, requiring only polylogarithmic Hamiltonian simulation time.
title Thermal expectation estimation via single-trajectory Gibbs sampling with non-destructive measurements
topic Quantum Physics
Mathematical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.21595