Simulating quantum collision models with Hamiltonian simulations using early fault-tolerant quantum computers

Abstract: We develop randomized quantum algorithms to simulate quantum collision models, also known as repeated interaction schemes, which provide a rich framework to model various open-system dynamics. The underlying technique involves composing time evolutions of the total (system, bath, and interaction) Hamiltonian and intermittent tracing out of the environment degrees of freedom. This results in a unified framework where any near-term Hamiltonian simulation algorithm can be incorporated to implement an arbitrary number of such collisions on early fault-tolerant quantum computers: we do not assume access to specialized oracles such as block encodings and minimize the number of ancilla qubits needed. In particular, using the correspondence between Lindbladian evolution and completely positive trace-preserving maps arising out of memoryless collisions, we provide an end-to-end quantum algorithm for simulating Lindbladian dynamics. For a system of $n$-qubits, we exhaustively compare the circuit depth needed to estimate the expectation value of an observable with respect to the reduced state of the system after time $t$ while employing different near-term Hamiltonian simulation techniques, requiring at most $n+2$ qubits in all. We compare the CNOT gate counts of the various approaches for estimating the Transverse Field Magnetization of a $10$-qubit XX-Heisenberg spin chain under amplitude damping. Finally, we also develop a framework to efficiently simulate an arbitrary number of memory-retaining collisions, i.e., where environments interact, leading to non-Markovian dynamics. Overall, our methods can leverage quantum collision models for both Markovian and non-Markovian dynamics on early fault-tolerant quantum computers, shedding light on the advantages and limitations of simulating open systems dynamics using this framework.