PRX Quantum
"Efficient Description of Many-Body Systems with Matrix Product Density Operators"
Matrix product states form a powerful ansatz for the simulation of a wide range of one-dimensional quantum systems that are in a pure state. Their power stems from the fact that they faithfully approximate states with a low amount of entanglement, the “area law.” However, in order to accurately capture the physics of realistic systems, one generally needs to apply a mixed-state description. In this work, we establish the mixed-state analog of this characterization. We show that one-dimensional mixed states with a low amount of entanglement, quantified by the entanglement of purification, can be efficiently approximated by matrix product density operators.
Access to the paper: https://journals.aps.org/prxquantum/abstract/10.1103/PRXQuantum.1.010304