Hybrid Quantum Algorithm for Simulating Real-Time Thermal Correlation Functions

Abstract

We present a hybrid Path Integral Monte Carlo (hPIMC) algorithm to calculate real-time quantum thermal correlation functions and demonstrate its application to open quantum systems. The hPIMC algorithm leverages the successes of classical PIMC as a computational tool for high-dimensional system studies by exactly simulating dissipation using the Feynman-Vernon influence functional on a classical computer. We achieve a quantum speed-up over the classical algorithm by computing short-time matrix elements of the quantum propagator on a quantum computer. We show that the component of imaginary-time evolution can be performed accurately using the recently developed Probabilistic Imaginary-Time Evolution (PITE) algorithm, and we introduce a novel low-depth circuit for approximate real-time evolution under the kinetic energy operator using a Discrete Variable Representation (DVR). We test the accuracy of the approximation by computing the position-position thermal correlation function of a proton transfer reaction.