Figure 11
From: Simulating \(Z_{2}\) lattice gauge theory with the variational quantum thermalizer
The absolute value of the meson string operator as a function of the string length (lattice units) for \(N = 8\). The results for two temperatures, \(T/m = 0.5\) (left) and \(T/m = 1.25\) (right) are plotted using both the variational Gibbs state (with infinite statistics) and the exact density matrix. One notices that at larger temperatures the current variational ansätze give states which deviate from the exact result