Ground State Preparation via Qubitization

Abstract: We describe a protocol for preparing the ground state of a Hamiltonian $H$ on a quantum computer. This is done by designing a quantum algorithm that implements the imaginary time evolution operator: $e^{-\tau H}$. The method relies on the so-called ``qubitization'' procedure of Low and Chuang which, assuming the existence of a unitary encoding of the Hamiltonian $H = \langle G| U_H |G\rangle$, produces a new operator $W_H$ whose moments are the Chebyshev polynomials of $H$ when projected on $|G\rangle$. Using this result and the expansion of $e^{-\tau H}$ in terms of Chebyshev polynomials we construct a circuit that implements an approximation of the imaginary time evolution operator which, at large time, projects any state on the ground state, provided a non-trivial initial overlap between the two. We illustrate our method on two models: the transverse field Ising model and a single qubit toy model.