An efficient algorithm for approximate shadow Hamiltonian simulation
We propose an efficient algorithm based on shadow Hamiltonian simulation to approximately simulate the real-time dynamics of observables under time-independent Hamiltonians. Shadow Hamiltonian simulation works at the level of the operator algebra generated by the observables through commutators with the Hamiltonian. Exactly encoding the quantum state in this picture is generally inefficient for interacting systems due to the exponential growth of the operator algebra. Our algorithm overcomes this bottleneck by systematically identifying the elements of the algebra most relevant to the target observables. This targeted approach is a controlled approximation that yields a highly efficient quantum state encoding that substantially reduces the size of the qubit register required to perform the time evolution using the shadow Hamiltonian. We propose two main pruning schemes, one based on a predefined operator basis and another on a constructed Krylov basis. We also present a hybrid scheme that builds a Krylov basis within a pruned algebra in the predefined basis. We benchmark our algorithm using lattice spin systems in one and two dimensions, for both one- and higher-point correlators as observables.