Variational Quantum Eigensolver in Compressed Space for Nearest-Neighbour Quadratic Fermionic Hamiltonians

Variational quantum eigensolvers (VQE) are one of the possible tasks that can be performed in noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers. While one of the limitations of NISQ platforms is their restricted number of available qubits, the theory of compressable matchgate circuits can be used to circumvent this limitation for certain types of Hamiltonians. We show how VQE algorithms can be used to find the ground state of quadratic fermionic Hamiltonians, providing an expressible ansatz in a logarithmic number of qubits. In particular, for systems of $n$ orbitals encoded to 2-local qubit models with nearest neighbour interactions, the ground state energy can be evaluated with $O\left(\log n\right)$ sets of measurements. This result is invariant of the dimensions in which the $n$ sites are arranged.