Classical and Quantum Simulation of All-to-All Quantum Dynamics in Logarithmic Space

Abstract

We study both the classical and the quantum complexity of the problem of estimating disorder-averaged quench dynamics for all-to-all spin Hamiltonians such as quantum Hopfield, Sherrington--Kirkpatrick (SK) or Dicke-type models. Disorder averaging restores permutation invariance in this setting, so states of $N$ spins can be stored in $\mathcal O(\log N)$ qubits. While logarithmic-space quantum computations are known to be simulatable classically in polynomial time or in polylogarithmic space, whether a single algorithm can achieve both is open, raising the possibility of simultaneous quantum advantage. To this end, we give a quantum algorithm for permutation-invariant $k$-local dynamics without disorder using polynomial time and $\mathcal O(\log N)$ quantum and classical space. We show that any classical algorithm matching these resources would imply $\mathsf{BQL}\subseteq \mathsf{SC}$. For short times, however, we provide such algorithms, including for SK models. For Hopfield models, we discuss how dilating the disorder to ancilla qubits reduces the problem to the disorder-free case on an enlarged system, thus extending both classical and quantum results to them. We give some evidence that their long-time dynamics are non-trivial. They thus emerge as a candidate for a simultaneous time--space advantage in quantum simulation.