Dissipative mean-field theory of IBM utility experiment

Abstract

In spite of remarkable recent advances, quantum computers still lack useful applications. A promising direction for such utility is offered by the simulation of the dynamics of many-body quantum systems, which cannot be efficiently computed classically. Recently, IBM used a superconducting quantum computer to simulate a kicked quantum Ising model with large numbers of qubits and time steps. These results were later reproduced using numerical techniques based on tensor networks and Clifford expansion. In this work, we analyze the experiment in the eyes of a simple-minded mean-field approximation. We treat neighboring qubits as a self-consistent source of dephasing and express them in terms of Kraus operators. Although our approach completely disregards entanglement between qubits, it captures the overall dependence of physical observables as a function of time and external magnetic field. This observation can help rationalize the success of the quantum computer in solving this specific problem.