Reducing entanglement with a Hamiltonian derived Clifford transformation

Abstract

Recently (Physica Scripta, 100(10):105401, 2025), an algorithm was introduced that deterministically generates a Clifford transformation from the Qubit Coupled Cluster (QCC) algorithm which we call Q-Cliff (QCC+Clifford). There, it was shown that Q-Cliff could be utilized to generate a hardware efficient version of the QCC ansatz. Here, we examine and refine these techniques and show that Q-Cliff can be utilized to generate efficient classical and quantum approximations to the ground states of chemical systems. The algorithm generates an efficient variational method that generally has accuracy between MP2 and CISD with $O(N^6)$. Furthermore, we show through DMRG calculations that the entanglement between qubits is reduced significantly and therefore the accuracy for a given bond dimension can be vastly improved (up to an order of magnitude). Finally, we refine the previously reported algorithm to generate low-depth and CNOT efficient circuits that can be optimized with a comparable number of energy evaluations to state-of-the-art VQE algorithms. All these results show that this Hamiltonian derived Clifford transformation should be a tool used for many classical and quantum algorithms.