hey,
I was trying to reconstruct the Hamiltonian from a covariance matrix but I always get nan values. this function implements the conversion. I checked and I realized that it’s the “atanh” that causes the problem. is there a way to overcome this issue??
I’m using the latest version of strawberryfields from the master
here is a simple script to produce the same error:
prog = sf.Program(1)
amp = .7
np.random.seed(5)
x = np.random.rand(1)
with prog.context as q:
sf.ops.DisplacedSqueezed(r=amp,p=x) | q[0]
eng = sf.Engine('gaussian')
result = eng.run(prog)
cov = result.state.cov()
print(sf.decompositions.covmat_to_hamil(cov))
Thanks @kareem_essafty for pointing this out. I’m not sure if this is a bug or not. I’ll consult with the team and we’ll get back to you when we understand more what’s causing this issue.
Hi @kareem_essafty — Thanks for the question!
I believe sf is giving you the correct output, in that a Gibbs state, i.e., a state of the form \exp(-\beta H) is only pure at infinite inverse temperature \beta = 1/(k_B T) where k_B is the Boltzmann constant and T is the temperature.
A quick solution to this problem is to start with a thermal state with a small mean number of photons and then extrapolate to the zero temperature limit.
the result didn’t include any nan and was perfect except for the fact that the hamiltonian was not symmetric.
besides that, if i used a displacedsqueezed operation instead of the S and D gates i get nan values
another question but please bare with me I’m sorry,
mean photon number for S gate is sinh(squezzing amp)**2 and the phase doesn’t affect right?
and for the D gate is abs(alpha)**2 and alpha is a complex number right?