Quantum simulation on emerging quantum hardware is a topic of intense interest. While many studies focus on computing ground state properties or simulating unitary dynamics of closed systems, open quantum systems are an interesting target of study owing to their ubiquity and rich physical behavior. However, their non-unitary dynamics are also not natural to simulate on near-term quantum hardware. Here, we report algorithms for the digital quantum simulation of the dynamics of open quantum systems governed by a Lindblad equation using an adaptation of the quantum imaginary time evolution (QITE) algorithm. We demonstrate the algorithms on IBM Quantums hardware with simulations of the spontaneous emission of a two level system and the dissipative transverse field Ising model. Our work shows that the dynamics of open quantum systems can be efficiently simulated on near-term quantum hardware.
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