Decomposition of high-rank factorized unitary coupled-cluster operators using ancilla and multi-qubit controlled low-rank counterparts

Abstract

The factorized form of the unitary coupled-cluster (UCC) approximation is one of the most promising methodologies to prepare trial states for strongly correlated systems within the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) framework. The factorized form of the UCC ansatz can be systematically applied to a reference state to generate the desired entanglement. The difficulty associated with such an approach is the requirement of simultaneously entangling a growing number of qubits, which quickly exceeds the hardware limitations of today's quantum machines. In particular, while circuits for singles and double excitations can be performed on current hardware, higher-rank excitations require too many gate operations. In this work, we propose a set of new schemes that trade off using extra qubits for a reduced gate depth to decompose high-rank UCC excitation operators into significantly lower depth circuits. These results will remain useful even when fault-tolerant machines are available to reduce the overall state-preparation circuit depth.