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Saturable Quantum Speed Limits for Imaginary-Time Evolution

Quantum Physics 2025-08-15 v1

Abstract

We derive a Geometric quantum speed limit (QSL) for imaginary-time evolution, where the dynamics is governed by a non-unitary Schr\"{o}dinger equation. By introducing a cost function based on the angular distance between the normalized evolving state and the initial state, we obtain a lower bound on the evolution time expressed as the ratio between this angle and the time-averaged energy dispersion. Our bound is analytical, general, and applicable to arbitrary time-independent Hamiltonians. We analytically evaluate this bound for two physically motivated cases. First, we apply it to a two-level system and derive an expression for the minimal time. Second, we analyze the imaginary-time version of Grover search problem and rigorously reproduce the well-known logarithmic scaling T=O(logN)T=\mathcal{ O}(\log N) within our QSL framework.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.10361,
  title  = {Saturable Quantum Speed Limits for Imaginary-Time Evolution},
  author = {Kohei Kobayashi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.10361},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

7 pages, 0 figure

R2 v1 2026-07-01T04:49:19.057Z