Efficient ground state preparation in variational quantum eigensolver with symmetry-breaking layers

Abstract: Variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) solves the ground state problem of a given Hamiltonian by finding the parameters of a quantum circuit ansatz that minimizes the Hamiltonian expectation value. Among possible quantum circuit ans\"{a}tze, the Hamiltonian variational ansatz (HVA) is widely studied for quantum many-body problems as the ansatz with sufficiently large depth is theoretically guaranteed to express the ground state. However, since the HVA shares the same symmetry with the Hamiltonian, it is not necessarily good at finding the symmetry-broken ground states that prevail in nature. In this paper, we systematically explore the limitations of the HVA for solving symmetry-broken systems and propose an alternative quantum circuit ansatz with symmetry-breaking layers. With extensive numerical simulations, we show that the proposed ansatz finds the ground state in depth significantly shorter than the bare HVA when the target Hamiltonian has symmetry-broken ground states.