Variational Gibbs State Preparation on Trapped-Ion Devices
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2603.03801 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 4 Mar 2026] Title:Variational Gibbs State Preparation on Trapped-Ion Devices Authors:Reece Robertson, Mirko Consiglio, Josey Stevens, Emery Doucet, Tony J. G. Apollaro, Sebastian Deffner View a PDF of the paper titled Variational Gibbs State Preparation on Trapped-Ion Devices, by Reece Robertson and Mirko Consiglio and Josey Stevens and Emery Doucet and Tony J. G. Apollaro and Sebastian Deffner View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:We implement a variational quantum algorithm for Gibbs state preparation of a transverse-field Ising model on IonQ's quantum computers. To this end, we train the variational parameters via classical simulation and perform state tomography on the quantum devices to evaluate the fidelity of the prepared Gibbs state. As a main result, we find that fidelity decreases (non-monotonically) as a function of the inverse temperature $\beta$ of the system. Fidelity also decreases as a function of the size of the system. Interestingly, we find that a Gibbs state prepared for a specified $\beta$ is a better representative of a Gibbs state prepared for a $\textit{lower}$ $\beta$; or in other words, thermal fluctuations in the quantum hardware lead to digital heating, that is, an increase in the temperature of the prepared Gibbs state above what was intended. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2603.03801 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2603.03801v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.03801 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Reece Robertson [view email] [v1] Wed, 4 Mar 2026 07:24:19 UTC (1,153 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Variational Gibbs State Preparation on Trapped-Ion Devices, by Reece Robertson and Mirko Consiglio and Josey Stevens and Emery Doucet and Tony J. G. Apollaro and Sebastian DeffnerView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-03 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?)