Topology Obstructs Pure Foundation Neural Quantum States
Foundation models for ground states in spin-1/2 systems are a promising method for problems ranging from quantum chemistry to identifying new phase diagrams. Nearly all such models are currently pure-states that condition on the Hamiltonian's parameters, whose Monte Carlo samples give energy estimates according to the variational principle. In this contribution, we show that this representation is topologically obstructed. For any gapped Hamiltonian family whose ground-state bundle is non-trivial, every continuous normalized state-vector model has zero fidelity with the ground state at some parameter value in the Hamiltonian family. For that value, the energy is at least one spectral gap,...
| Authors | Timothy Heightman, Elena Orlova, Philip Mantrov et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | quant-ph |
| Published | 7 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 7 September 2026 |
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