Oral: Mitigating the QMC sign problem via local transformations

The sign problem in Quantum Monte Carlo is a widespread problem plaguing many computational physicist from studying frustrated spin models, fermionic and general many-body systems. In this work we address the root of the sign problem in spin models and propose an optimization algorithm to mitigate and potentially cure the sign problem for many well-known models such as the Heisenberg model. This method invovles optimizing a cost function quantifying the sign problem using local unitary transformations.