Simulating Markovian Open Quantum Systems Using Higher-Order Series Expansion

We present an efficient quantum algorithm for simulating the dynamics of Markovian open quantum systems. The performance of our algorithm is similar to the previous state-of-the-art quantum algorithm, i.e., it scales linearly in evolution time and poly-logarithmically in inverse precision. However, our algorithm is conceptually cleaner, and it only uses simple quantum primitives without compressed encoding. Our approach is based on a novel mathematical treatment of the evolution map, which involves a higher-order series expansion based on Duhamel’s principle and approximating multiple integrals using scaled Gaussian quadrature. Our method easily generalizes to simulating quantum dynamics with time-dependent Lindbladians. Furthermore, our method of approximating multiple integrals using scaled Gaussian quadrature could potentially be used to produce a more efficient approximation of time-ordered integrals, and therefore can simplify existing quantum algorithms for simulating time-dependent Hamiltonians based on a truncated Dyson series.