Quantum simulation of many-body hamiltonians using perturbation theory with bounded-strength interactions

We show how to map a given n-qubit target Hamiltonian with bounded-strength k-body interactions onto a simulator Hamiltonian with two-body interactions, such that the ground-state energy of the target and the simulator Hamiltonians are the same up to an extensive error O(n) for arbitrary small. The strength of the interactions in the simulator Hamiltonian depends on and k but does not depend on n. We accomplish this reduction using a new way of deriving an effective low-energy Hamiltonian which relies on the Schrieffer-Wolff transformation of many-body physics. © 2008 The American Physical Society.