  Controlled quantum mechanical devices provide a means of simulating more
complex quantum systems exponentially faster than classical computers. Such
"quantum simulators" rely heavily upon being able to prepare the ground state
of Hamiltonians, whose properties can be used to calculate correlation
functions or even the solution to certain classical computations. While
adiabatic preparation remains the primary means of producing such ground
states, here we provide a different avenue of preparation: cooling to the
ground state via simulated dissipation. This is in direct analogy to
contemporary efforts to realize generalized forms of simulated annealing in
quantum systems.
