Hardware-Efficient Ground-State Preparation using Variational Imaginary-Time Majorana Evolution
Abstract
Compact ground-state preparation circuits are essential for early fault-tolerant quantum chemistry. We introduce Variational Imaginary-time Majorana Evolution (VIME), a classical pre-training algorithm that extends operator-projected variational quantum imaginary-time evolution (OVQITE) to molecular electronic structure using a single compiled Majorana-propagation (MP) surrogate graph. We pair VIME with a compressed tiled Unitary Product State (c-tUPS) ansatz that we develop to reduce both classical simulation and quantum state-preparation costs. In the strongly correlated ruthenium complex TLD-1411, active-space calculations requiring up to 52 qubits achieve chemical precision against DMRG reference energies, with energy errors approximately 400× smaller than those from ADAPT-VQE-based variational Majorana-propagation (ADAPT-VMPE). Across the strongly multireference acene series up to heptacene (60 qubits), VIME matches or improves on the MP-reported energy accuracy of the ADAPT-VMPE comparison points with up to 26× fewer CNOTs and 167× lower two-qubit depth. These results establish imaginary-time classical pre-training of compressed variational ansätze as a promising route to resource-efficient molecular ground-state preparation.
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BibTeX
@misc{santona2026hardwareefficient,
title = {{Hardware-Efficient Ground-State Preparation using Variational Imaginary-Time Majorana Evolution}},
author = {Federico Santona and Manuel G. Algaba and Aeishah Ameera Anuar and Anna M. Wernbacher and Prachi Sharma and Fedor Šimkovic IV},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.01954},
eprint = {2610.01954},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.01954},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Hardware-Efficient Ground-State Preparation using Variational Imaginary-Time Majorana Evolution
AU - Federico Santona
AU - Manuel G. Algaba
AU - Aeishah Ameera Anuar
AU - Anna M. Wernbacher
AU - Prachi Sharma
AU - Fedor Šimkovic IV
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.01954
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.01954
AB - Compact ground-state preparation circuits are essential for early fault-tolerant quantum chemistry. We introduce Variational Imaginary-time Majorana Evolution (VIME), a classical pre-training algorithm that extends operator-projected variational quantum imaginary-time evolution (OVQITE) to molecular electronic structure using a single compiled Majorana-propagation (MP) surrogate graph. We pair VIME with a compressed tiled Unitary Product State (c-tUPS) ansatz that we develop to reduce both classical simulation and quantum state-preparation costs. In the strongly correlated ruthenium complex TLD-1411, active-space calculations requiring up to 52 qubits achieve chemical precision against DMRG reference energies, with energy errors approximately 400× smaller than those from ADAPT-VQE-based variational Majorana-propagation (ADAPT-VMPE). Across the strongly multireference acene series up to heptacene (60 qubits), VIME matches or improves on the MP-reported energy accuracy of the ADAPT-VMPE comparison points with up to 26× fewer CNOTs and 167× lower two-qubit depth. These results establish imaginary-time classical pre-training of compressed variational ansätze as a promising route to resource-efficient molecular ground-state preparation.
ER -