# qml.templates.subroutines.SingleExcitationUnitary¶

SingleExcitationUnitary(weight, wires=None)[source]

Circuit to exponentiate the tensor product of Pauli matrices representing the single-excitation operator entering the Unitary Coupled-Cluster Singles and Doubles (UCCSD) ansatz. UCCSD is a VQE ansatz commonly used to run quantum chemistry simulations.

The CC single-excitation operator is given by

$\hat{U}_{pr}(\theta) = \mathrm{exp} \{ \theta_{pr} (\hat{c}_p^\dagger \hat{c}_r -\mathrm{H.c.}) \},$

where $$\hat{c}$$ and $$\hat{c}^\dagger$$ are the fermionic annihilation and creation operators and the indices $$r$$ and $$p$$ run over the occupied and unoccupied molecular orbitals, respectively. Using the Jordan-Wigner transformation the fermionic operator defined above can be written in terms of Pauli matrices (for more details see arXiv:1805.04340).

$\hat{U}_{pr}(\theta) = \mathrm{exp} \Big\{ \frac{i\theta}{2} \bigotimes_{a=r+1}^{p-1}\hat{Z}_a (\hat{Y}_r \hat{X}_p) \Big\} \mathrm{exp} \Big\{ -\frac{i\theta}{2} \bigotimes_{a=r+1}^{p-1} \hat{Z}_a (\hat{X}_r \hat{Y}_p) \Big\}.$

The quantum circuit to exponentiate the tensor product of Pauli matrices entering the latter equation is shown below (see arXiv:1805.04340):

As explained in Seely et al. (2012), the exponential of a tensor product of Pauli-Z operators can be decomposed in terms of $$2(n-1)$$ CNOT gates and a single-qubit Z-rotation referred to as $$U_\theta$$ in the figure above. If there are $$X$$ or $$Y$$ Pauli matrices in the product, the Hadamard ($$H$$) or $$R_x$$ gate has to be applied to change to the $$X$$ or $$Y$$ basis, respectively. The latter operations are denoted as $$U_1$$ and $$U_2$$ in the figure above. See the Usage Details section for more information.

Parameters
• weight (float) – angle $$\theta$$ entering the Z rotation acting on wire p

• wires (Iterable or Wires) – Wires that the template acts on. The wires represent the subset of orbitals in the interval [r, p]. Must be of minimum length 2. The first wire is interpreted as r and the last wire as p. Wires in between are acted on with CNOT gates to compute the parity of the set of qubits.

Raises

ValueError – if inputs do not have the correct format

Notice that:

1. $$\hat{U}_{pr}(\theta)$$ involves two exponentiations where $$\hat{U}_1$$, $$\hat{U}_2$$, and $$\hat{U}_\theta$$ are defined as follows,

$[U_1, U_2, U_{\theta}] = \Bigg\{\bigg[R_x(-\pi/2), H, R_z(\theta/2)\bigg], \bigg[H, R_x(-\frac{\pi}{2}), R_z(-\theta/2) \bigg] \Bigg\}$
2. For a given pair [r, p], ten single-qubit and 4*(len(wires)-1) CNOT operations are applied. Notice also that CNOT gates act only on qubits wires[1] to wires[-2]. The operations performed across these qubits are shown in dashed lines in the figure above.

An example of how to use this template is shown below:

import pennylane as qml
from pennylane.templates import SingleExcitationUnitary

dev = qml.device('default.qubit', wires=3)

@qml.qnode(dev)
def circuit(weight, wires=None):
SingleExcitationUnitary(weight, wires=wires)
return qml.expval(qml.PauliZ(0))

weight = 0.56
print(circuit(weight, wires=[0, 1, 2]))