Gregory Nested Picard Iteration Schemes for Open Quantum Systems Governed by the Lindblad Equation

Abstract

Numerical simulation of quantum computing hardware and open quantum systems governed by the Lindblad equation is challenging due to the high dimensionality of the density matrix and the need to preserve fundamental physical properties. In our previous work, we developed an arbitrary-order, low-rank, completely positive and trace preserving (CPTP) method for the Lindblad equation with time-dependent Hamiltonians by nested Picard iteration (NPI). In this work, we develop Gregory NPI schemes, which are CPTP schemes constructed by Gregory-type quadrature on equispaced nodes. The methods, which are of order up to nine, substantially reduce the computational cost compared to our previously proposed NPI schemes with Gaussian quadrature rules, while retaining high-order accuracy and structure preservation. We analyze the stability of the resulting scheme for a physics-based test equation. Numerical experiments verify the convergence of the method and demonstrate the effectiveness of the low-rank approximation. We study the performance of a previously constructed CNOT gate for both closed and open quantum systems.