Quantum Algorithms for Testing Hamiltonian Symmetry

Phys Rev Lett. 2022 Oct 14;129(16):160503. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.160503.

Abstract

Symmetries in a Hamiltonian play an important role in quantum physics because they correspond directly with conserved quantities of the related system. In this Letter, we propose quantum algorithms capable of testing whether a Hamiltonian exhibits symmetry with respect to a group. We demonstrate that familiar expressions of Hamiltonian symmetry in quantum mechanics correspond directly with the acceptance probabilities of our algorithms. We execute one of our symmetry-testing algorithms on existing quantum computers for simple examples of both symmetric and asymmetric cases.