Title | Importance of the Spectral gap in Estimating Ground-State Energies |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2022 |
Authors | Deshpande, A, Gorshkov, AV, Fefferman, B |
Journal | PRX Quantum |
Volume | 3 |
Date Published | 12/9/2022 |
Abstract | The field of quantum Hamiltonian complexity lies at the intersection of quantum many-body physics and computational complexity theory, with deep implications to both fields. The main object of study is the LocalHamiltonian problem, which is concerned with estimating the ground-state energy of a local Hamiltonian and is complete for the class QMA, a quantum generalization of the class NP. A major challenge in the field is to understand the complexity of the LocalHamiltonian problem in more physically natural parameter regimes. One crucial parameter in understanding the ground space of any Hamiltonian in many-body physics is the spectral gap, which is the difference between the smallest two eigenvalues. Despite its importance in quantum many-body physics, the role played by the spectral gap in the complexity of the LocalHamiltonian is less well-understood. In this work, we make progress on this question by considering the precise regime, in which one estimates the ground-state energy to within inverse exponential precision. Computing ground-state energies precisely is a task that is important for quantum chemistry and quantum many-body physics. |
URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.11582 |
DOI | 10.1103/prxquantum.3.040327 |