What does "stoquastic" mean?

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”.

How do you pronounce "stoquastic"?

Pronounced //stəˈkwæstɪk//.

Stoquastic

//stəˈkwæstɪk// adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective

1
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”. not-comparable
"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."

Example

More examples

"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."

Etymology

Blend of stochastic + quantum.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.