Qubitization strategies for bosonic field theories

Quantum simulations of bosonic field theories require a truncation in field space to map the theory onto finite quantum registers. Ideally, the truncated theory preserves the symmetries of the original model and has a critical point in the same universality class. In this paper, we explore two different truncations that preserve the symmetries of the 1+1-dimensional $O(3)$ non-linear $\sigma$-model - one that truncates the Hilbert space for the unit sphere by setting an angular momentum cutoff and a fuzzy sphere truncation inspired by non-commutative geometry. We compare the spectrum of the truncated theories in a finite box with the full theory. We use open boundary conditions, a novel method that improves on the correlation lengths accessible in our calculations. We provide evidence that the angular-momentum truncation fails to reproduce the $\sigma$-model and that the anti-ferromagnetic fuzzy model agrees with the full theory.