Complexity of geometrically local stoquastic Hamiltonians

Asad Raza; Jens Eisert; Alex B. Grilo

doi:10.22331/q-2026-02-11-2004

Complexity of geometrically local stoquastic Hamiltonians

Asad Raza^1,2, Jens Eisert^1,3, and Alex B. Grilo²

¹Dahlem Center for Complex Quantum Systems, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany
²Sorbonne Université, CNRS, LIP6, 75005 Paris, France
³Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, 14109 Berlin, Germany

Published:	2026-02-11, volume 10, page 2004
Eprint:	arXiv:2407.15499v2
Doi:	https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2026-02-11-2004
Citation:	Quantum 10, 2004 (2026).

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Abstract

The QMA-completeness of the local Hamiltonian problem is a landmark result of the field of Hamiltonian complexity that studies the computational complexity of problems in quantum many-body physics. Since its proposal, substantial effort has been invested in better understanding the problem for physically motivated important families of Hamiltonians. In particular, the QMA-completeness of approximating the ground state energy of local Hamiltonians has been extended to the case where the Hamiltonians are geometrically local in one and two spatial dimensions. Among those physically motivated Hamiltonians, stoquastic Hamiltonians play a particularly crucial role, as they constitute the manifestly sign-free Hamiltonians in Monte Carlo approaches. Interestingly, for such Hamiltonians, the problem at hand becomes more ''classical'', being hard for the class MA (the randomized version of NP) and its complexity has tight connections with derandomization. In this work, we prove that both the two- and one-dimensional geometrically local analogues remain MA-hard with high enough qudit dimension. Moreover, we show that related problems are StoqMA-complete.

Popular summary

Stoquastic Hamiltonians avoid the sign problem in Monte Carlo simulations, so they are often viewed as the easy corner of many-body physics. We show that this intuition fails. Even under strict physical structure, estimating the ground-state energy remains computationally intractable. Earlier work proved MA-hardness for general stoquastic Hamiltonians but did not enforce geometric locality. Our results close that gap by establishing MA-hardness for nearest-neighbour, geometrically local models in two dimensions and on a line (one dimension), all with constant local dimension of qudits. We give two explicit constructions that encode a randomized classical verifier while preserving stoquasticity and geometric locality. Our results imply that in the worst case, sign-free geometrically local interactions between qudits still do not yield a tractable ground-state energy problem.

► BibTeX data

@article{Raza2026complexityof,
  doi = {10.22331/q-2026-02-11-2004},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2026-02-11-2004},
  title = {Complexity of geometrically local stoquastic {H}amiltonians},
  author = {Raza, Asad and Eisert, Jens and Grilo, Alex B.},
  journal = {{Quantum}},
  issn = {2521-327X},
  publisher = {{Verein zur F{\"{o}}rderung des Open Access Publizierens in den Quantenwissenschaften}},
  volume = {10},
  pages = {2004},
  month = feb,
  year = {2026}
}

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Cited by

[1] Gabriel Waite and Michael J. Bremner, "The Complexity of Local Stoquastic Hamiltonians on 2D Lattices", Quantum 10, 2097 (2026).

[2] Ryu Hayakawa, Casper Gyurik, Mahtab Yaghubi Rad, and Vedran Dunjko, "Computational complexity of the homology problem with orientable filtration: MA-completeness", arXiv:2510.07014, (2025).

[3] Gabriel Waite and Michael J. Bremner, "The Complexity of Local Stoquastic Hamiltonians on 2D Lattices", arXiv:2502.14244, (2025).

[4] Yupan Liu and Pei Wu, "The power of unentanglement without destructive interference", arXiv:2604.27886, (2026).

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