From Heat to Homology: Spectral Gap Transfer for Exact Quantum Gibbs Sampling at All Temperatures

Abstract

Preparing Gibbs states through dissipative dynamics requires controlling convergence for the chosen Hamiltonian $H$ and coupling operators. However, efficient implementation requires convergence guarantees from the spectral gap of the generator of the dynamics, which remains a crucial challenge. Recent results address the challenge by restricting the dynamics with structural assumptions about the Hamiltonian and its interactions. For the Chen-Kastoryano-Gilyen (CKG) construction and arbitrary finite-dimensional Hamiltonians, we prove an explicit comparison that converts a spectral gap estimate for the infinite-temperature generator into a lower bound on the spectral gap of the CKG quantum Gibbs sampler at every finite positive inverse temperature $β$. It allows a single spectral gap estimate at infinite temperature to certify convergence across Hamiltonians and temperatures. Such an estimate is often known from a classical spectral gap estimate, such as the classical random walk spectral gap. For Hodge Laplacians of simplicial complexes as Hamiltonians, we construct coupling operators whose generator at infinite temperature has the same spectral gap as a classical simplicial down-up walk. A positive spectral gap of the walk and bounded spectral width $W=λ_{\max}(H)-λ_{\min}(H)$ give a generator spectral gap independent of the number of simplices at every fixed temperature. We then establish conditions under which the sampler approximately prepares zero-energy (harmonic) states in polynomial evolution time. This provides a conditional convergence guarantee for the state preparation in the thermal approach to quantum topological data analysis.