Propagating sparsely supported states with time-dependent neural quantum states

Abstract

Neural quantum states (NQSs) have emerged as a powerful ansatz for quantum dynamics. Their high entanglement capacity promises to overcome the entanglement barrier. However, existing time-dependent NQS methods are ill-equipped to propagate sparsely supported initial states due to the inherent mismatch between the supports of such states and their time derivatives. To address this issue, we introduce the interpolation sampling method as a novel form of importance sampling, where samples are drawn from a distribution that interpolates between the wave function and its time derivative. Combined with a global-in-time variational principle, we demonstrate with the example of the two-dimensional transverse-field Ising model that interpolation sampling allows for accurate propagation of extremely peaked states that standard wave function sampling could not tackle. We further improve sampling efficiency by introducing (i) a configuration-time joint sampling scheme where spin configurations and time are both treated as random variables, and (ii) a hybrid strategy for sample proposal that incorporates the knowledge of a Krylov subspace. Our work extends the scope of time-dependent NQS methods to a wider range of physically relevant scenarios, while challenging the prevailing reliance on the Born distribution and its close variants as the default basis for sampling.