Quantum algorithm for preparing thermal Gibbs states - detailed analysis

In a recent work [10], Poulin and one of us presented a quantum algorithm for preparing thermal Gibbs states of interacting quantum systems. This algorithm is based on Grovers's technique for quantum state engineering, and its running time is dominated by the factor D/Z(\beta), where D and Z(\beta) denote the dimension of the quantum system and its partition function at inverse temperature \beta, respectively. We present here a modified algorithm and a more detailed analysis of the errors that arise due to imperfect simulation of Hamiltonian time evolutions and limited performance of phase estimation (finite accuracy and nonzero probability of failure). This modfication together with the tighter analysis allows us to prove a better running time by the effect of these sources of error on the overall complexity. We think that the ideas underlying of our new analysis could also be used to prove a better performance of quantum Metropolis sampling by Temme et al. [12].