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The Variational Quantum Eigensolver: a review of methods and best practices

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arxiv 2111.05176 v3 pith:X76USAAH submitted 2021-11-09 quant-ph

classification quant-ph
keywords quantumcomputingmethodsalgorithmdifferentnoiseoptimizationvariational
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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The variational quantum eigensolver (or VQE) uses the variational principle to compute the ground state energy of a Hamiltonian, a problem that is central to quantum chemistry and condensed matter physics. Conventional computing methods are constrained in their accuracy due to the computational limits. The VQE may be used to model complex wavefunctions in polynomial time, making it one of the most promising near-term applications for quantum computing. Finding a path to navigate the relevant literature has rapidly become an overwhelming task, with many methods promising to improve different parts of the algorithm. Despite strong theoretical underpinnings suggesting excellent scaling of individual VQE components, studies have pointed out that their various pre-factors could be too large to reach a quantum computing advantage over conventional methods. This review aims to provide an overview of the progress that has been made on the different parts of the algorithm. All the different components of the algorithm are reviewed in detail including representation of Hamiltonians and wavefunctions on a quantum computer, the optimization process, the post-processing mitigation of errors, and best practices are suggested. We identify four main areas of future research:(1) optimal measurement schemes for reduction of circuit repetitions; (2) large scale parallelization across many quantum computers;(3) ways to overcome the potential appearance of vanishing gradients in the optimization process, and how the number of iterations required for the optimization scales with system size; (4) the extent to which VQE suffers for quantum noise, and whether this noise can be mitigated. The answers to these open research questions will determine the routes for the VQE to achieve quantum advantage as the quantum computing hardware scales up and as the noise levels are reduced.

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Cited by 13 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Feynman's clock and hierarchy-informed sampling for quantum error mitigation

    quant-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Feynman's clock maps arbitrary circuits onto Hamiltonian dynamics whose BBGKY hierarchy enables polynomial-overhead, controllable error mitigation via informed sampling.

  2. Spin-$s$ $U(1)$-eigenstate preparation

    quant-ph 2026-01 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A Gray-code-based quantum circuit prepares arbitrary fixed-digit-sum (U(1)) eigenstates of spin-s chains, yielding the first preparation of spin-s XXX Bethe states.

  3. Exploiting biased noise in variational quantum models

    quant-ph 2025-10 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Twirling amplitude-damping noise into uniform Pauli/depolarising channels reduces expressivity and gradient magnitudes, while preserving the noise bias yields better VQA optimisation in the studied models.

  4. STABSim: A Parallelized Clifford Simulator with Features Beyond Direct Simulation

    quant-ph 2025-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    STABSim is a GPU-accelerated Clifford tableau simulator with new measurement handling, exact T1/T2 noise sampling in a common regime, and a fast Clifford+T to PBC transpiler.

  5. Quantum computation of hadron scattering in a lattice gauge theory

    quant-ph 2025-05 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    On a trapped-ion quantum computer, the authors prepared multiple meson wave packets and simulated their early-time collisions in a 1+1D Z2 lattice gauge theory.

  6. Effective Bethe Ansatz for Spin-1 Non-integrable Models

    cond-mat.stat-mech 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 5.0 of 10

    The Effective Bethe Ansatz approximates ground and first excited states of the spin-1 bilinear-biquadratic chain in finite windows around both integrable endpoints, with fidelity to exact diagonalization degrading con...

  7. Optimizing QUBO on a quantum computer by mimicking imaginary time evolution

    quant-ph 2025-05 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    ITEMC iteratively mimics imaginary time evolution to solve QUBO instances, achieving high CVaR-based approximation ratios in simulation and finding the best known solution on IBM hardware for up to 80 qubits.

  8. Scalable parallel simulation of quantum circuits on CPU and GPU systems

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    Q2Chemistry, a full-amplitude quantum simulator, is accelerated 2.7x to 4.5x on benchmark circuits by overlapping communication, fusing gates, and using a two-dimensional GPU thread layout.

  9. Quantum computing of magnetic-skyrmion-like patterns in Heisenberg ferromagnets

    quant-ph 2025-05 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    A simulator-based quantum eigensolver reveals field-driven discontinuities in a small Heisenberg ferromagnet, which the authors read as hints of zero-temperature skyrmion-like magnetic patterns.

  10. Quantum-Assisted Space Logistics Mission Planning

    math.OC 2025-01 reject novelty 4.0 of 10

    A 7-node space logistics routing problem was encoded as a QUBO-style Hamiltonian and solved on QCi's Dirac-3 entropy quantum computer, producing a feasible but admitted-suboptimal plan.

  11. Variational Quantum Eigensolver: A Comparative Analysis of Classical and Quantum Optimizer Methods

    quant-ph 2024-12 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    The hybrid optimizer QN-SPSA+PSR, mixing SPSA metric estimates with parameter-shift gradients, converges faster and more stably than QN-SPSA+SPSA on a 12-spin Ising model.

  12. Pattern Tree: Enhancing Efficiency in Quantum Circuit Optimization Based on Pattern-matching

    quant-ph 2024-12 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    Organizing quantum circuit rewrite rules into a prefix-sharing pattern tree cuts pattern-matching compilation time by 20% on benchmarks, and up to 90% on two larger circuits.

  13. Quantum Frontiers in High Energy Physics

    hep-ph 2024-11 unverdicted

    A review of quantum sensing, quantum simulation, quantum machine learning, and collider-based quantum tests applied to open high-energy physics problems.

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