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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Tight bound for the total time in digital-analog quantum computation

Mikel Garcia de Andoin*

Mikel Sanz

  • *Contact author: mikel.garciadeandoin@ehu.eus
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, L022035 – Published 26 May, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/pkz9-vjkh

Abstract

Digital-analog quantum computing (DAQC) is a universal computational paradigm that combines the evolution under an entangling Hamiltonian with the application of single-qubit gates. Since any unitary operation can be decomposed into a sequence of evolutions generated by two-body Hamiltonians, DAQC is inherently well suited for realizing such operations. Suboptimal upper bounds for the total time required to perform these evolutions have been previously proposed. Here, we improve these limits by providing a tight bound for this crucial parameter, which shows a linear dependence with the number of couplings. This result enables a precise estimation of the time resources needed for quantum simulations and quantum algorithms implemented within the DAQC framework, facilitating a rigorous comparison with other approaches.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, L022035– Published 26 May, 2026
  • Received 4 February 2026
  • Accepted 9 May 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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