Truncation uncertainties for accurate quantum simulations of lattice gauge theories

Abstract

The encoding of lattice gauge theories onto quantum computers requires a discretization of the gauge field's Hilbert space on each link, which presents errors with respect to the Kogut--Susskind limit. In the electric basis, Hilbert space fragmentation has recently been shown to limit the excitation of large electric fields. Here, we leverage this to develop a formalism for estimating the size of truncation errors in the electric basis. Generically, the truncation error falls off as a factorial of the field truncation. Examples of this formalism are applied to the Schwinger model and a pure U(1) lattice gauge theory. For reasonable choices of parameters, we improve on previous error estimates by a factor of 10^{306}.