Preparation circuits for matrix product states by classical variational disentanglement

We study the classical compilation of quantum circuits for the preparation of matrix product states (MPS), which are quantum states of low entanglement with an efficient classical description. Our algorithm represents a near-term alternative to previous sequential approaches by reverse application of a disentangler, which can be found by minimizing bipartite entanglement measures after the application of a layer of parametrized disentangling gates. Since a successful disentangler is expected to decrease the bond dimension on average, such a layer-by-layer optimization remains classically efficient even for deep circuits. Additionally, as the Schmidt coefficients of all bonds are locally accessible through the canonical Γ−Λ form of an MPS, the optimization algorithm can be heavily parallelized. We discuss guarantees and limitations to trainability and show numerical results for ground states of one-dimensional, local Hamiltonians as well as artificially spread out entanglement among multiple qubits using error-correcting codes.