Ground-state selection via nonlinear quantum dissipation

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 4 Apr 2026] Ground-state selection via nonlinear quantum dissipation Alireza Ataei, Olle Eriksson, Vahid Azimi Mousolou Finding the ground state of complex quantum systems remains a central challenge in many-body physics, quantum chemistry, and combinatorial optimization, due to the exponential growth of the Hilbert-space dimension and the entangled structure of ground states. We show that quantum Landau--Lifshitz-Gilbert (QLLG) dynamics, proposed in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 266704 (2024)], provides a physically realizable, real-time nonlinear mechanism that selectively suppresses excited-state components and drives the system toward the lowest-energy eigenstate contained in the initial state. Unlike purely numerical methods such as the imaginary-time projection method, QLLG combines coherent precession with dissipative suppression, enabling experimentally accessible ground-state preparation. For random initial states in the N-qubit Hilbert space of dimension 2^N, convergence occurs in times scaling linearly with system size, N, and inversely with the spectral gap. We provide numerical simulations of our analytical results with a Hamiltonian describing an interacting spin chain with Heisenberg exchange and a Zeeman term. Our results identify nonlinear quantum dissipation as a powerful tool for real-time ground-state preparation in large quantum systems and quantum optimization. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2604.03731 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2604.03731v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.03731 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Alireza Ataei [view email] [v1] Sat, 4 Apr 2026 13:22:46 UTC (195 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)