Preparing symmetry broken ground states with variational quantum algorithms

Understand

One of the most promising applications for near term quantum computers is the simulation of physical quantum systems, particularly many-electron systems in chemistry and condensed matter physics.

• In solid state physics, finding the correct symmetry broken ground state of an interacting electron system is one of the central challenges.
• The Variational Hamiltonian Ansatz (VHA), a variational hybrid quantum-classical algorithm especially suited for finding the ground state of a solid state system, will in general not prepare a broken symmetry state unless the initial state is chosen to exhibit the correct symmetry.
• In this work, we discuss three variations of the VHA designed to find the correct broken symmetry states close to a transition point between different orders.