{"paper":{"title":"The Thermodynamic Cost of Ignorance: Thermal State Preparation with One Ancilla Qubit","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"quant-ph","authors_text":"Matthew Hagan, Nathan Wiebe","submitted_at":"2025-02-05T17:50:37Z","abstract_excerpt":"In this work we investigate a model of thermalization wherein a single ancillary qubit randomly interacts with the system to be thermalized. This not only sheds light on the emergence of Gibbs states in nature, but also provides a routine for preparing arbitrary thermal states on a digital quantum computer. For desired $\\beta$ and random interaction $G$ the routine boils down to time independent Hamiltonian simulation and is represented by the channel $\\Phi : \\rho \\mapsto \\mathbb{E}_G {\\rm Tr}_{\\rm Env} \\left[ e^{-i(H + \\alpha G)t} \\left(\\rho \\otimes \\frac{e^{-\\beta H_E}}{\\mathcal{Z}}\\right) e"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2502.03410","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2502.03410/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}