Hidden rotation symmetry of the Jordan-Wigner transformation and its application to measurement in quantum computation

Abstract: Using a global rotation by theta about the z-axis in the spin sector of the Jordan-Wigner transformation rotates Pauli matrices X and Y in the x-y-plane, while it adds a global complex phase to fermionic quantum states that have a fixed number of particles. With the right choice of angles, this relates expectation values of Pauli strings containing products of X and Y to different products, which can be employed to reduce the number of measurements needed when simulating fermionic systems on a quantum computer. Here, we derive this symmetry and show how it can be applied to systems in Physics and Chemistry that involve Hamiltonians with only single-particle (hopping) and two-particle (interaction) terms. We also discuss the consequences of this for finding efficient measurement circuits in variational ground state preparation.