On the Feasibility of Exact Unitary Transformations for Many-body Hamiltonians

Abstract

Exact unitary transformations play a central role in the analysis and simulation of many-body quantum systems, yet the conditions under which they can be carried out exactly and efficiently remain incompletely understood. We show that exact transformations arise whenever the adjoint action of a unitary's generator defines a linear map within a finite-dimensional operator space. In this regime, there exists a finite-degree polynomial that annihilates the adjoint map, rendering the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff (BCH) expansion finite. We identify the role of Lie algebras and their modules in producing finite BCH expansions in all known cases. This perspective brings together previously disparate examples of exact transformations under a single unifying principle and clarifies how algebraic relations between generators and transformed operators determine the polynomial degree of the transformation. We illustrate this framework for previously known cases of efficient unitary transformations including unitary coupled-cluster and Pauli product generators. Using this framework, we propose a new class of fermionic generators that can be used for efficient transformations. The result establishes sufficient algebraic conditions for when exact unitary transformations are possible and provides new strategies for reducing their computational cost in quantum simulation and constructing feasible unitary transformations.