stoquastic
/stəˈkwæstɪk/
stoquastic adjective: of a Hermitian matrix, having real non-positive off-diagonal elements. These matrices have elements of quantum mechanics and classical theory of stochastic matrices. For non-technical purposes ‘stoquastic’ is equivalent to “avoiding the sign problem”.
Adjective
stoquastic (not comparable)
- Of a Hermitian matrix, having real non-positive off-diagonal elements. These matrices have elements of quantum mechanics and classical theory of stochastic matrices. For non-technical purposes ‘stoquastic’ is equivalent to “avoiding the sign problem”.
- Stoquastic Hamiltonians, those for which all off-diagonal matrix elements in the standard basis are real and non-positive, are common in the physical world.2015, Ian Kivlichan, “On the complexity of stoquastic Hamiltonians,” publication not named (termpaper?), 11 December 2015
- We contrast this with the case of sampling from the output of a quantum computer running the Quantum Adiabatic Algorithm (QADI) with the restriction that the Hamiltonian that governs the evolution is gapped and stoquastic.2016, Edward Farhi, Aram W Harrow, “Quantum Supremacy through the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm”, in arXiv
Origin of stoquastic
Blend of stochastic + quantum.
Words formed from stoquastic
- stoquastic Hamiltonian
Words that rhyme with stoquastic
- plastic
- elastic
- fantastic
- bombastic
- mastic
- spastic
- heteroplastic
- inelastic
- periphrastic
- pleonastic
- aclastic
- alloplastic
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- anaclastic
- anaplastic
- anticlastic
- aplastic
- autoplastic
- basiplastic
- ceroplastic
- chiastic
- clastic
- cosmoplastic
- drastic
- encomiastic
- enthusiastic
- epispastic
- gelastic
- gymnastic
- heteroblastic
- holophrastic
- homoblastic
- homoplastic
- macroplastic
- normoplastic
- onomastic
- paraphrastic
- sarcastic
- synclastic
- achondroplastic
- agelastic
- antineoplastic
- antiphrastic
- antispastic
- apicoplastic
- autoschediastic
- cataclastic
- chiliastic
- conplastic
- cranioplastic
- docimastic
- dramastic
- dynastic
- dysplastic
- ecclesiastic
- ectoblastic
- ectoplastic
- electroplastic
- emplastic
- epiblastic
- epinastic
Questions about stoquastic
- What does stoquastic mean?
- Stoquastic means of a Hermitian matrix, having real non-positive off-diagonal elements. These matrices have elements of quantum mechanics and classical theory of stochastic matrices. For non-technical purposes ‘stoquastic’ is equivalent to “avoiding the sign problem”.
- What part of speech is stoquastic?
- Stoquastic is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce stoquastic?
- Stoquastic is pronounced /stəˈkwæstɪk/.
Words near stoquastic in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: stoquastic (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “stoquastic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stoquastic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.