Abstract
Preparing the ground state of a system of interacting classical particles is an -hard problem. Thus, there is in general no better algorithm to solve this problem than exhaustively going through all configurations of the system to determine the one with lowest energy, requiring a running time proportional to . A quantum computer, if it could be built, could solve this problem in time . Here, we present a powerful extension of this result to the case of interacting quantum particles, demonstrating that a quantum computer can prepare the ground state of a quantum system as efficiently as it does for classical systems.
- Received 17 September 2008
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.130503
©2009 American Physical Society