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arXiv:1906.11192 · Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation

Iterative Qubit Coupled Cluster Approach with Efficient Screening of Generators

Ilya G. Ryabinkin, Robert A. Lang, Scott N. Genin, Artur F. Izmaylov

Published Jan 14, 2020• 170 citations
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Abstract

An iterative version of the qubit coupled cluster (QCC) method [I. G. Ryabinkin et al., J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2019, 14, 6317] is proposed. The new method seeks to find ground electronic energies of molecules on noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices. Each iteration involves a canonical transformation of the Hamiltonian and employs constant-size quantum circuits at the expense of increasing the Hamiltonian size. We numerically studied the convergence of the method on ground-state calculations for LiH, H 2 O, and N 2 molecules and found that the exact ground-state energies can be systematically approached only if the generators of the QCC ansatz are sampled from a specific set of operators. We report an algorithm for constructing this set that scales linearly with the size of the Hamiltonian.

DOI
10.1021/acs.jctc.9b01084

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An iterative version of the qubit coupled cluster (QCC) method [I. G. Ryabinkin et al., J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2019, 14, 6317] is proposed. The new method seeks to find ground electronic energies of molecules on noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices. Each iteration involves a canonical transformation of the Hamiltonian and employs constant-size quantum circuits at the expense of increasing the Hamiltonian size. We numerically studied the convergence of the method on ground-state calculations for LiH, H 2 O, and N 2 molecules and found that the exact ground-state energies can be systematically approached only if the generators of the QCC ansatz are sampled from a specific set of operators. We report an algorithm for constructing this set that scales linearly with the size of the Hamiltonian.
Noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices is the current realm of quantum computing. To exploit their limited powers to full extent it is imperative to develop suitable algorithms. We present the iterative qubit coupled cluster (iQCC) method aimed to perform realistic quantum chemistry calculations on such devices. The iQCC method can use as few as a single generator of entanglement (a single Pauli word) yet is able to reach the full configurational interaction (FCI) limit. The iQCC method is also endowed with a few techniques that allow for relatively large problems to be addressed. We show the capacity of our method on the electronic structure calculations for the LiH (4 qubits), H2_22​O (6 qubits) and N2_22​ (14 qubits) molecules
Abstract The iterative qubit coupled cluster (iQCC) method is a systematic variational approach to solve the electronic structure problem on universal quantum computers. It is able to use arbitrarily shallow quantum circuits at expense of iterative canonical transformation of the Hamiltonian and rebuilding a circuit. Here we present a variety of a posteriori corrections to the iQCC energies to reduce the number of iterations to achieve the desired accuracy. Our energy corrections are based on a low-order perturbation theory series that can be efficiently evaluated on a classical computer. Moreover, capturing a part of the total energy perturbatively, allows us to formulate the qubit active-space concept, in which only a subset of all qubits is treated variationally. As a result, further reduction of quantum resource requirements is achieved. We demonstrate the utility and efficiency of our approach numerically on the examples of 10-qubit N 2 molecule dissociation, the 24-qubit H 2 O symmetric stretch, and 56-qubit singlet-triplet gap calculations for the technologically important complex, tris-(2-phenylpyridine)iridium(III) Ir(ppy) 3 .
Abstract The performance of quantum algorithms for ground-state energy estimation is directly impacted by the quality of the initial state, where quality is traditionally defined in terms of the overlap of the input state with the target state. An ideal state preparation protocol can be characterized by being easily generated classically and can be transformed to a quantum circuit with minimal overhead while having a significant overlap with the targeted eigenstate of a given Hamiltonian. We propose a method that meets these requirements by introducing a variant of the iterative qubit coupled cluster (iQCC) approach, which exclusively uses Clifford circuits. These circuits can be efficiently simulated on a classical computer, with polynomial scaling according to the Gottesman–Knill theorem. Since the iQCC method has been developed as a quantum algorithm firstly, our variant can be mapped naturally to quantum hardware. We additionally implemented several optimizations to the algorithm enhancing its scalability. We demonstrate the algorithm’s correctness in ground-state simulations for small molecules such as H2, LiH, and H2O, and extend our study to complex systems like the titanium-based compound Ti(C5H5)(CH3)3 with a (20, 20) active space, requiring 40 qubits. Results show that the convergence of the algorithm is well-behaved, and the ground state can be represented accurately. Moreover, we show an automated workflow for restricting the qubit active space, thus relieving computational resources by considering only qubits affected by non-trivial operations.
A unitary coupled cluster (UCC) form for the wave function in the variational quantum eigensolver has been suggested as a systematic way to go beyond the mean-field approximation and include electron correlation in solving quantum chemistry problems on a quantum computer. Although being exact in the limit of including all possible coupled cluster excitations, practically, the accuracy of this approach depends on the number and type of terms are included in the wave function parametrization. Another difficulty of UCC is a growth of the number of simultaneously entangled qubits even at the fixed Fermionic excitation rank. Not all quantum computing architectures can cope with this growth. To address both problems, we introduce a qubit coupled cluster (QCC) method that starts directly in the qubit space and uses energy response estimates for ranking the importance of individual entanglers for the variational energy minimization. Also, we provide an exact factorization of a unitary rotation of more than two qubits to a product of two-qubit unitary rotations. Thus, the QCC method with the factorization technique can be limited to only two-qubit entanglement gates and allows for very efficient use of quantum resources in terms of the number of coupled cluster operators. The method performance is illustrated by calculating ground-state potential energy curves of H 2 and LiH molecules with chemical accuracy, ≤1 kcal/mol, and a symmetric water dissociation curve.
Recently (Physica Scripta, 100(10):105401, 2025), an algorithm was introduced that deterministically generates a Clifford transformation from the Qubit Coupled Cluster (QCC) algorithm which we call Q-Cliff (QCC+Clifford). There, it was shown that Q-Cliff could be utilized to generate a hardware efficient version of the QCC ansatz. Here, we examine and refine these techniques and show that Q-Cliff can be utilized to generate efficient classical and quantum approximations to the ground states of chemical systems. The algorithm generates an efficient variational method that generally has accuracy between MP2 and CISD with O(N6)O(N^6)O(N6). Furthermore, we show through DMRG calculations that the entanglement between qubits is reduced significantly and therefore the accuracy for a given bond dimension can be vastly improved (up to an order of magnitude). Finally, we refine the previously reported algorithm to generate low-depth and CNOT efficient circuits that can be optimized with a comparable number of energy evaluations to state-of-the-art VQE algorithms. All these results show that this Hamiltonian derived Clifford transformation should be a tool used for many classical and quantum algorithms.
We introduce the multistate iterative qubit coupled cluster (MS-iQCC) method, a quantum-inspired algorithm that runs efficiently on classical hardware and is designed to predict both ground and excited electronic states of molecules. Accurate excited-state energetics are essential for interpreting spectroscopy and chemical reactivity, but standard electronic structure methods are either too computationally expensive for larger systems or lose reliability in the presence of strong electron correlation. MS-iQCC addresses this challenge by simultaneously optimizing multiple electronic states in a single, state-averaged procedure that treats ground and excited states on equal footing. This removes the energetic bias that is introduced when excited states are computed one at a time and constrained to remain orthogonal to previously optimized states. The approach supports multireference electronic structure by allowing multideterminantal initial guesses and by adaptively building a compact exponential ansatz from a pool of qubit excitation generators. We apply MS-iQCC to H4_44​, H2_22​O, N2_22​, and C2_22​, including strongly correlated geometries, and observe robust convergence of all targeted state energies to chemically meaningful accuracy across their potential energy surfaces.