Quantum algorithms for estimating the ground state energy of a quantum system often operate by preparing a classically accessible quantum state and then applying quantum phase estimation. Whether this approach yields quantum advantage hinges on the state’s energy spectrum, that is, the sequence of the state’s overlaps with the energy eigenstates of the system Hamiltonian. We show that the energy spectrum of any entanglement-compressed quantum state must have large support if most energy eigenstates are highly entangled, an assumption supported by the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Furthermore, we show that if the compressed quantum state minimizes expected energy, then its energy spectrum decays with the inverse-squared energy eigenvalues under a convex relaxation of the compression constraint. This explains the main empirical finding of Silvester et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 126503 (2025).] that the energy spectra of matrix product states do not decay exponentially.

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• Entanglement measures
• Quantum algorithms & computation
• Quantum information theory
• Quantum many-body systems
• Density matrix renormalization group
• Matrix product states