arXiv subjects

Joao Basso

Publications and source records attributed to Joao Basso.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Spectral Gap of the Davies Generator for the Mean-Field Heisenberg Model

The mean-field Heisenberg ferromagnet is a quantum spin model on the complete graph with isotropic spin-1/2 interactions. This non-commuting Hamiltonian is permutation and $\mathsf{SU}(2)$ invariant, and its Gibbs states undergo an $\mathsf{SU}(2)$ symmetry breaking phase transition at inverse temperature $\beta=2$. We consider the associated Davies generator, a canonical model of open-system thermalization, and prove tight asymptotic estimates for its spectral gap at all noncritical temperatures. For fixed $\beta<2$, the gap as a function of number of qubits $n$ is $\Theta(1)$, while for fixed $\beta>2$ the gap is $\Theta(n^{-1})$. The matching upper bound of the spectral gap is witnessed by the total magnetization order parameter, suggesting that the low-temperature ($\beta>2$) slowdown is associated with broken continuous symmetry. Two key ingredients in our approach are a comparison argument, which introduces auxiliary generators to bound dissipation on nontrivial representations of the symmetry groups $\mathsf{SU}(2)$ and $\mathsf{S}_n$, and a decomposition of the space of observables into spherical tensor operators to reveal a form of monotonicity.

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arXiv2025

On quantum to classical comparison for Davies generators

Despite extensive study, our understanding of quantum Markov chains remains far less complete than that of their classical counterparts. [Temme'13] observed that the Davies Lindbladian, a well-studied model of quantum Markov dynamics, contains an embedded classical Markov generator, raising the natural question of how the convergence properties of the quantum and classical dynamics are related. While [Temme'13] showed that the spectral gap of the Davies Lindbladian can be much smaller than that of the embedded classical generator for certain highly structured Hamiltonians, we show that if the spectrum of the Hamiltonian does not contain long arithmetic progressions, then the two spectral gaps must be comparable. As a consequence, we prove that for a large class of Hamiltonians, including those obtained by perturbing a fixed Hamiltonian with a generic external field, the quantum spectral gap remains within a constant factor of the classical spectral gap. Our result aligns with physical intuition and enables the application of classical Markov chain techniques to the quantum setting. The proof is based on showing that any ``off-diagonal'' eigenvector of the Davies generator can be used to construct an observable which commutes with the Hamiltonian and has a Lindbladian Rayleigh quotient which can be upper bounded in terms of that of the original eigenvector's Lindbladian Rayleigh quotient. Thus, a spectral gap for such observables implies a spectral gap for the full Davies generator.

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arXiv2025

Quantum Replica Exchange

The presence of energy barriers in the state space of a physical system can lead to exponentially slow convergence for sampling algorithms like Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). In the classical setting, replica exchange (or parallel tempering) is a powerful heuristic to accelerate mixing in these scenarios. In the quantum realm, preparing Gibbs states of Hamiltonians faces a similar challenge, where bottlenecks can dramatically increase the mixing time of quantum dynamical semigroups. In this work, we introduce a quantum analogue of the replica exchange method. We define a Lindbladian on a joint system of two replicas and prove that it can accelerate mixing for a class of Hamiltonians with local energy barriers. We provide a rigorous lower bound on the spectral gap of the combined system's Lindbladian, which leads to an exponential improvement in spectral gap with respect to the barrier height. We showcase the applicability of our method with several examples, including the defected 1D Ising model at arbitrary constant temperature, and defected non-commuting local Hamiltonians at high temperature.

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arXiv2024

Optimizing random local Hamiltonians by dissipation

A central challenge in quantum simulation is to prepare low-energy states of strongly interacting many-body systems. In this work, we study the problem of preparing a quantum state that optimizes a random all-to-all, sparse or dense, spin or fermionic $k$-local Hamiltonian. We prove that a simplified quantum Gibbs sampling algorithm achieves a $\Omega(\frac{1}{k})$-fraction approximation of the optimum, giving an exponential improvement on the $k$-dependence over the prior best (both classical and quantum) algorithmic guarantees. Combined with the circuit lower bound for such states, our results suggest that finding low-energy states for sparsified (quasi)local spin and fermionic models is quantumly easy but classically nontrivial. This further indicates that quantum Gibbs sampling may be a suitable metaheuristic for optimization problems.

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arXiv2024

Statistical Estimation in the Spiked Tensor Model via the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm

The quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) is a general-purpose algorithm for combinatorial optimization. In this paper, we analyze the performance of the QAOA on a statistical estimation problem, namely, the spiked tensor model, which exhibits a statistical-computational gap classically. We prove that the weak recovery threshold of $1$-step QAOA matches that of $1$-step tensor power iteration. Additional heuristic calculations suggest that the weak recovery threshold of $p$-step QAOA matches that of $p$-step tensor power iteration when $p$ is a fixed constant. This further implies that multi-step QAOA with tensor unfolding could achieve, but not surpass, the classical computation threshold $\Theta(n^{(q-2)/4})$ for spiked $q$-tensors. Meanwhile, we characterize the asymptotic overlap distribution for $p$-step QAOA, finding an intriguing sine-Gaussian law verified through simulations. For some $p$ and $q$, the QAOA attains an overlap that is larger by a constant factor than the tensor power iteration overlap. Of independent interest, our proof techniques employ the Fourier transform to handle difficult combinatorial sums, a novel approach differing from prior QAOA analyses on spin-glass models without planted structure.

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arXiv2024

Parameter Setting in Quantum Approximate Optimization of Weighted Problems

Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) is a leading candidate algorithm for solving combinatorial optimization problems on quantum computers. However, in many cases QAOA requires computationally intensive parameter optimization. The challenge of parameter optimization is particularly acute in the case of weighted problems, for which the eigenvalues of the phase operator are non-integer and the QAOA energy landscape is not periodic. In this work, we develop parameter setting heuristics for QAOA applied to a general class of weighted problems. First, we derive optimal parameters for QAOA with depth $p=1$ applied to the weighted MaxCut problem under different assumptions on the weights. In particular, we rigorously prove the conventional wisdom that in the average case the first local optimum near zero gives globally-optimal QAOA parameters. Second, for $p\geq 1$ we prove that the QAOA energy landscape for weighted MaxCut approaches that for the unweighted case under a simple rescaling of parameters. Therefore, we can use parameters previously obtained for unweighted MaxCut for weighted problems. Finally, we prove that for $p=1$ the QAOA objective sharply concentrates around its expectation, which means that our parameter setting rules hold with high probability for a random weighted instance. We numerically validate this approach on general weighted graphs and show that on average the QAOA energy with the proposed fixed parameters is only $1.1$ percentage points away from that with optimized parameters. Third, we propose a general heuristic rescaling scheme inspired by the analytical results for weighted MaxCut and demonstrate its effectiveness using QAOA with the XY Hamming-weight-preserving mixer applied to the portfolio optimization problem. Our heuristic improves the convergence of local optimizers, reducing the number of iterations by 7.4x on average.

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arXiv2023

Analyzing Prospects for Quantum Advantage in Topological Data Analysis

Lloyd et al. were first to demonstrate the promise of quantum algorithms for computing Betti numbers, a way to characterize topological features of data sets. Here, we propose, analyze, and optimize an improved quantum algorithm for topological data analysis (TDA) with reduced scaling, including a method for preparing Dicke states based on inequality testing, a more efficient amplitude estimation algorithm using Kaiser windows, and an optimal implementation of eigenvalue projectors based on Chebyshev polynomials. We compile our approach to a fault-tolerant gate set and estimate constant factors in the Toffoli complexity. Our analysis reveals that super-quadratic quantum speedups are only possible for this problem when targeting a multiplicative error approximation and the Betti number grows asymptotically. Further, we propose a dequantization of the quantum TDA algorithm that shows that having exponentially large dimension and Betti number are necessary, but insufficient conditions, for super-polynomial advantage. We then introduce and analyze specific problem examples which have parameters in the regime where super-polynomial advantages may be achieved, and argue that quantum circuits with tens of billions of Toffoli gates can solve seemingly classically intractable instances.

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arXiv2022

Formation of robust bound states of interacting microwave photons

Systems of correlated particles appear in many fields of science and represent some of the most intractable puzzles in nature. The computational challenge in these systems arises when interactions become comparable to other energy scales, which makes the state of each particle depend on all other particles. The lack of general solutions for the 3-body problem and acceptable theory for strongly correlated electrons shows that our understanding of correlated systems fades when the particle number or the interaction strength increases. One of the hallmarks of interacting systems is the formation of multi-particle bound states. In a ring of 24 superconducting qubits, we develop a high fidelity parameterizable fSim gate that we use to implement the periodic quantum circuit of the spin-1/2 XXZ model, an archetypal model of interaction. By placing microwave photons in adjacent qubit sites, we study the propagation of these excitations and observe their bound nature for up to 5 photons. We devise a phase sensitive method for constructing the few-body spectrum of the bound states and extract their pseudo-charge by introducing a synthetic flux. By introducing interactions between the ring and additional qubits, we observe an unexpected resilience of the bound states to integrability breaking. This finding goes against the common wisdom that bound states in non-integrable systems are unstable when their energies overlap with the continuum spectrum. Our work provides experimental evidence for bound states of interacting photons and discovers their stability beyond the integrability limit.

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arXiv2022

Noise-resilient Edge Modes on a Chain of Superconducting Qubits

Inherent symmetry of a quantum system may protect its otherwise fragile states. Leveraging such protection requires testing its robustness against uncontrolled environmental interactions. Using 47 superconducting qubits, we implement the one-dimensional kicked Ising model which exhibits non-local Majorana edge modes (MEMs) with $\mathbb{Z}_2$ parity symmetry. Remarkably, we find that any multi-qubit Pauli operator overlapping with the MEMs exhibits a uniform late-time decay rate comparable to single-qubit relaxation rates, irrespective of its size or composition. This characteristic allows us to accurately reconstruct the exponentially localized spatial profiles of the MEMs. Furthermore, the MEMs are found to be resilient against certain symmetry-breaking noise owing to a prethermalization mechanism. Our work elucidates the complex interplay between noise and symmetry-protected edge modes in a solid-state environment.

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arXiv2022

Performance and limitations of the QAOA at constant levels on large sparse hypergraphs and spin glass models

The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) is a general purpose quantum algorithm designed for combinatorial optimization. We analyze its expected performance and prove concentration properties at any constant level (number of layers) on ensembles of random combinatorial optimization problems in the infinite size limit. These ensembles include mixed spin models and Max-$q$-XORSAT on sparse random hypergraphs. Our analysis can be understood via a saddle-point approximation of a sum-over-paths integral. This is made rigorous by proving a generalization of the multinomial theorem, which is a technical result of independent interest. We then show that the performance of the QAOA at constant levels for the pure $q$-spin model matches asymptotically the ones for Max-$q$-XORSAT on random sparse Erdős-Rényi hypergraphs and every large-girth regular hypergraph. Through this correspondence, we establish that the average-case value produced by the QAOA at constant levels is bounded away from optimality for pure $q$-spin models when $q\ge 4$ and is even. This limitation gives a hardness of approximation result for quantum algorithms in a new regime where the whole graph is seen.

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arXiv2022

Suppressing quantum errors by scaling a surface code logical qubit

Practical quantum computing will require error rates that are well below what is achievable with physical qubits. Quantum error correction offers a path to algorithmically-relevant error rates by encoding logical qubits within many physical qubits, where increasing the number of physical qubits enhances protection against physical errors. However, introducing more qubits also increases the number of error sources, so the density of errors must be sufficiently low in order for logical performance to improve with increasing code size. Here, we report the measurement of logical qubit performance scaling across multiple code sizes, and demonstrate that our system of superconducting qubits has sufficient performance to overcome the additional errors from increasing qubit number. We find our distance-5 surface code logical qubit modestly outperforms an ensemble of distance-3 logical qubits on average, both in terms of logical error probability over 25 cycles and logical error per cycle ($2.914\%\pm 0.016\%$ compared to $3.028\%\pm 0.023\%$). To investigate damaging, low-probability error sources, we run a distance-25 repetition code and observe a $1.7\times10^{-6}$ logical error per round floor set by a single high-energy event ($1.6\times10^{-7}$ when excluding this event). We are able to accurately model our experiment, and from this model we can extract error budgets that highlight the biggest challenges for future systems. These results mark the first experimental demonstration where quantum error correction begins to improve performance with increasing qubit number, illuminating the path to reaching the logical error rates required for computation.

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arXiv2022

The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm at High Depth for MaxCut on Large-Girth Regular Graphs and the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Model

The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) finds approximate solutions to combinatorial optimization problems. Its performance monotonically improves with its depth $p$. We apply the QAOA to MaxCut on large-girth $D$-regular graphs. We give an iterative formula to evaluate performance for any $D$ at any depth $p$. Looking at random $D$-regular graphs, at optimal parameters and as $D$ goes to infinity, we find that the $p=11$ QAOA beats all classical algorithms (known to the authors) that are free of unproven conjectures. While the iterative formula for these $D$-regular graphs is derived by looking at a single tree subgraph, we prove that it also gives the ensemble-averaged performance of the QAOA on the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) model defined on the complete graph. We also generalize our formula to Max-$q$-XORSAT on large-girth regular hypergraphs. Our iteration is a compact procedure, but its computational complexity grows as $O(p^2 4^p)$. This iteration is more efficient than the previous procedure for analyzing QAOA performance on the SK model, and we are able to numerically go to $p=20$. Encouraged by our findings, we make the optimistic conjecture that the QAOA, as $p$ goes to infinity, will achieve the Parisi value. We analyze the performance of the quantum algorithm, but one needs to run it on a quantum computer to produce a string with the guaranteed performance.

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arXiv2021

Observation of Time-Crystalline Eigenstate Order on a Quantum Processor

Quantum many-body systems display rich phase structure in their low-temperature equilibrium states. However, much of nature is not in thermal equilibrium. Remarkably, it was recently predicted that out-of-equilibrium systems can exhibit novel dynamical phases that may otherwise be forbidden by equilibrium thermodynamics, a paradigmatic example being the discrete time crystal (DTC). Concretely, dynamical phases can be defined in periodically driven many-body localized systems via the concept of eigenstate order. In eigenstate-ordered phases, the entire many-body spectrum exhibits quantum correlations and long-range order, with characteristic signatures in late-time dynamics from all initial states. It is, however, challenging to experimentally distinguish such stable phases from transient phenomena, wherein few select states can mask typical behavior. Here we implement a continuous family of tunable CPHASE gates on an array of superconducting qubits to experimentally observe an eigenstate-ordered DTC. We demonstrate the characteristic spatiotemporal response of a DTC for generic initial states. Our work employs a time-reversal protocol that discriminates external decoherence from intrinsic thermalization, and leverages quantum typicality to circumvent the exponential cost of densely sampling the eigenspectrum. In addition, we locate the phase transition out of the DTC with an experimental finite-size analysis. These results establish a scalable approach to study non-equilibrium phases of matter on current quantum processors.

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