Ancillary entangling Floquet kicks for accelerating quantum algorithms

Abstract

Quantum simulation with adiabatic annealing can provide insight into difficult problems that are impossible to study with classical computers. However, it deteriorates when the systems scale up due to the shrinkage of the excitation gap and thus places an annealing rate bottleneck for high success probability. Here, we accelerate quantum simulation using digital multi-qubit gates that entangle primary system qubits with the ancillary qubits. The practical benefits originate from tuning the ancillary gauge degrees of freedom to enhance the quantum algorithm's original functionality in the system subspace. For simple but nontrivial short-ranged, infinite long-ranged transverse-field Ising models, and the hydrogen molecule model after qubit encoding, we show improvement in the time to solution by one hundred percent but with higher accuracy through exact state-vector numerical simulation in a digital-analog setting. The findings are further supported by time-averaged Hamiltonian theory.