Meta-learning of Gibbs states for many-body Hamiltonians with applications to Quantum Boltzmann Machines
Organizations: Quantum Lab, Fujitsu Research of India
Abstract
The preparation of quantum Gibbs states is a fundamental challenge in quantum computing, essential for applications ranging from modeling open quantum systems to quantum machine learning. Building on the Meta-Variational Quantum Eigensolver framework proposed by Cervera-Lierta et al. and a problem-driven ansatz design, we introduce two meta-learning algorithms: Meta-Variational Quantum Thermalizer (Meta-VQT) and Neural Network Meta-VQT (NN-Meta VQT) for efficient thermal state preparation of parametrized Hamiltonians on Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices. Meta-VQT utilizes a fully quantum ansatz, while NN Meta-VQT integrates a quantum--classical hybrid architecture. Both use collective optimization over a finite set of training parameter values to prepare approximate Gibbs states at held-out parameter values within the sampled parameter domain. We validate our methods on Transverse Field Ising Models (TFIM) with up to eight qubits and on a two-qubit Heisenberg model with all field terms. Within these finite-size benchmarks, the trained models accurately prepare thermal states at test points inside the training interval. For the six and eight qubit cases of TFIM, meta-learned parameters when combined with appropriately designed ansatz serve as warm-start initializations, significantly outperforming random initializations in the optimization tasks. Furthermore, a 3 qubit Kitaev ring example showcases our algorithm's effectiveness across finite-temperature crossover regimes. Finally, we apply our algorithms to train a Quantum Boltzmann Machine (QBM) on a 2-qubit Heisenberg model with all field terms, achieving enhanced training efficiency, improved Gibbs state accuracy, and a 30-fold runtime speedup over existing techniques such as variational quantum imaginary time (VarQITE)-based QBM highlighting the practicality of meta-algorithm-based QBMs.
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Appendix
| Prior Variational Approaches | System Qubits | Ancilla Qubits |
| Quantum Hamiltonian-Based Models and the Variational Quantum Thermalizer Algorithm, Verdon et al. [ 63 ] | 0 | |
| Variational quantum Gibbs state preparation with a truncated Taylor series, Wang et al. [ 69 ] | 11 | 1 |
| Extending the Variational Quantum Eigensolver to Finite Temperatures, Selisko et al. [ 56 ] | 4 | 0 |
| Variational quantum simulation of the quantum critical regime, Shi et al. [ 57 ] | 6 | 0 |
| Training Quantum Boltzmann Machines with the Variational Quantum Eigensolver, Huijgen et al. [ 30 ] | 10 | 0 |
| Thermal state preparation of the SYK model using a variational quantum algorithm, Araz et al. [ 6 ] | 12 | 0 |
| Hamiltonian | Commuting Blocks | NN Meta-VQT | VarQITE |
| 1 | |||
| 2 | |||
| 3 | |||
| 3 | |||
| 3 |
| Method | Layers | Average Trace distance |
| Meta-VQT | 4 SU2 + 1 HVA | |
| Meta-VQT | 4 SU2 | |
| NN Meta-VQT | 4 SU2 + 1 HVA | |
| NN Meta-VQT | 4SU2 | |
| VarQITE | 4SU2 |
Quantum State Preparation
Quantum State Preparation develops circuits and control strategies for creating target quantum states with limited gates, noise, and hardware resources.
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