Trotter Error and Orbital Transformations in Quantum Phase Estimation
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2602.18913 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 21 Feb 2026] Title:Trotter Error and Orbital Transformations in Quantum Phase Estimation Authors:Marvin Kronenberger, Mihael Erakovic, Markus Reiher View a PDF of the paper titled Trotter Error and Orbital Transformations in Quantum Phase Estimation, by Marvin Kronenberger and 1 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Quantum computation with Trotter product formulae is straightforward and requires little overhead in terms of logical qubits. The choice of the orbital basis significantly affects circuit depth, with localised orbitals yielding lowest circuit depths. However, literature results point to large Trotter errors incurred by localised orbitals. Here, we therefore investigate the effect of orbital transformations on Trotter error. We consider three strategies to reduce Trotter error by orbital transformation: (i) The a priori selection of an orbital basis that produces low Trotter error. (ii) The derivation of an orbital basis that produces a ground state energy free of Trotter error (as we observed that the Trotter error is a continuous function in the Givens-rotation parameter, from which continuity of this error upon orbital transformation can be deduced). (iii) Application of propagators that change the computational basis between Trotter steps. Our numerical results show that reliably reducing Trotter error by orbital transformations is challenging. General recipes to produce low Trotter errors cannot be easily derived, despite analytical expressions which suggest ways to decrease Trotter error. Importantly, we found that localised orbital bases do not produce large Trotter errors in molecular calculations, which is an important result for efficient QPE set-ups. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph); Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2602.18913 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2602.18913v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.18913 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Markus Reiher [view email] [v1] Sat, 21 Feb 2026 17:39:26 UTC (2,774 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Trotter Error and Orbital Transformations in Quantum Phase Estimation, by Marvin Kronenberger and 1 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-02 Change to browse by: physics physics.chem-ph physics.comp-ph References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)