Quantum computers hold great promise for molecular simulation, but noise remains a fundamental obstacle. We introduce a Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) pre-screening procedure that constructs compact, physically motivated Givens rotation ansätze tailored to realistic quantum hardware. By identifying the most important wavefunction contributions early in a QMC simulation, we build circuits that are shallower that conventional alternatives while preserving number symmetry. Benchmarked on Quantinuum System Model H1, QMC-prescreened circuits outperform more complex ansätze under realistic noise conditions. The method offers a practical path toward chemical accuracy on quantum devices, by providing an adjustable trade-off between expressivity and circuit depth to generate shallow circuits suited to current high-noise devices, as well as deeper, more expressive circuits that can be deployed on future lower-noise devices.
Quantum computers hold great promise for molecular simulation, but noise remains a fundamental obstacle. We introduce a Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) pre-screening procedure that constructs compact, physically motivated Givens rotation ansätze tailored to realistic quantum hardware. By identifying the most important wavefunction contributions early in a QMC simulation, we build circuits that are shallower that conventional alternatives while preserving number symmetry. Benchmarked on Quantinuum System Model H1, QMC-prescreened circuits outperform more complex ansätze under realistic noise conditions. The method offers a practical path toward chemical accuracy on quantum devices, by providing an adjustable trade-off between expressivity and circuit depth to generate shallow circuits suited to current high-noise devices, as well as deeper, more expressive circuits that can be deployed on future lower-noise devices.
The ability of quantum computers to overcome the exponential memory scaling of many-body problems is expected to transform quantum chemistry. Quantum algorithms require accurate representations of electronic states on a quantum device, but current approximations struggle to combine chemical accuracy and gate-efficiency while preserving physical symmetries, and rely on measurement-intensive adaptive methods that tailor the wave function ansatz to each molecule. In this contribution, we present a symmetry-preserving and gate-efficient ansatz that provides chemically accurate molecular energies with a well-defined circuit structure. Our approach exploits local qubit connectivity, orbital optimisation, and connections with generalised valence bond theory to maximise the accuracy that is obtained with shallow quantum circuits. Numerical simulations for molecules with weak and strong electron correlation, including benzene, water, and the singlet-triplet gap in tetramethyleneethane, demonstrate that chemically accurate energies are achieved with as much as 84% fewer two-qubit gates compared to state-of-the-art adaptive ansatz techniques.
Quantum algorithms require accurate representations of electronic states on a quantum device, yet the approximation of electronic wave functions for strongly correlated systems remains a profound theoretical challenge, with existing methods struggling to balance the competing demands of chemical accuracy and gate efficiency. Moreover, a critical limitation of the most of the state-of-the-art methods developed to date lies in their substantial reliance on extensive pre-circuit measurements, which introduce significant overheads and contribute to inefficiencies in practical implementation. To address these interconnected challenges and establish a harmonious synergy between them, we propose an algorithmic framework that focuses on efficiently capturing the molecular strong correlation through an ordered set of computationally less demanding rank-one and seniority-zero excitations, yielding a parameterized ansatz with shallow gate depth. Furthermore, to achieve minimal pre-circuit measurement overhead, we implement a selective pruning of excitations through a hybrid approach that combines intuition-based selection with shallow-depth, rank-one excitations driven uni-parameter circuit optimization strategy. With the incorporation of qubit-based excitations via particle-preserving exchange circuits, we demonstrate a further reduction in quantum complexities, enhancing the overall resource efficiency of the approach. With a range of challenging applications on strongly correlated systems, we demonstrate that our dynamic ansatz not only significantly enhances computational efficiency but also delivers exceptional accuracy, robustness, and resilience to the noisy environments inherent in near-term quantum hardware.
The ability of quantum computers to overcome the exponential memory scaling of many-body problems is expected to transform quantum chemistry. Quantum algorithms require accurate representations of electronic states on a quantum device, but current approximations struggle to combine chemical accuracy and gate efficiency while preserving physical symmetries, and rely on measurement-intensive adaptive methods that tailor the wave function to each molecule. In this contribution, we present a symmetry-preserving and gate-efficient that provides chemically accurate molecular energies with a well-defined circuit structure. Our approach exploits local qubit connectivity, orbital optimization, and connections with generalized valence bond theory to maximize the accuracy that is obtained with shallow quantum circuits. Numerical simulations for molecules with weak and strong electron correlation, including benzene, water, and the singlet-triplet gap in tetramethyleneethane, demonstrate that chemically accurate energies are achieved with as much as 84% fewer two-qubit gates compared to state-of-the-art adaptive techniques. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Quantum computing and quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) are respectively the state-of-the-art quantum and classical computing methods for understanding many-body quantum systems. Here, we propose a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm that integrates these two methods, inheriting their distinct features in efficient representation and manipulation of quantum states and overcoming their limitations. We first introduce non-stoquasticity indicators (NSIs) and their upper bounds, which measure the sign problem, the most notable limitation of QMC. We show that our algorithm could greatly mitigate the sign problem, which decreases NSIs with the assistance of quantum computing. Meanwhile, the use of quantum Monte Carlo also increases the expressivity of shallow quantum circuits, allowing more accurate computation that is conventionally achievable only with much deeper circuits. We numerically test and verify the method for the N2 molecule (12 qubits) and the Hubbard model (16 qubits). Our work paves the way to solving practical problems with intermediate-scale and early-fault tolerant quantum computers, with potential applications in chemistry, condensed matter physics, materials, high energy physics, etc.
Dynamical simulation of quantum many-body systems is a central task in quantum chemistry and requires efficient wavefunction representations. Although tensor-network and neural-network quantum states have achieved considerable success in ground-state calculations, entanglement growth hinders their application to quantum dynamics. Quantum computing may offer a route to quantum advantage, but algorithms such as Trotterization generally require fault-tolerant quantum computers, whereas near-term hardware supports only limited circuit sizes. Variational quantum simulation (VQS) instead represents the evolving state with a single shallow, fixed-size parameterized quantum circuit (PQC). Here, we introduce nonorthogonal variational quantum simulation (NOVQS), which applies linear combinations of parameterized quantum states to real- and imaginary-time evolutions. We design a shallow, hardware-friendly ansatz tailored to second-quantized electronic-structure Hamiltonians, together with resource-efficient protocols for measuring the matrices and vectors in the parameter equations of motion. Error analysis and resource estimation are also provided. Numerical simulations of hydrogen chains and the nitrogen molecule demonstrate that a collection of shallow, or even single-layer, PQCs can match or outperform a much deeper PQC in VQS. In particular, we identify a trade-off between circuit number and depth. NOVQS therefore provides a flexible route to enhancing wavefunction expressivity under circuit-depth constraints, making it a promising framework for quantum dynamics simulations on near-term quantum processors.
Achieving chemical accuracy with shallow quantum circuits is a significant challenge in quantum computational chemistry, particularly for near-term quantum devices. In this work, we present a Clifford-based Hamiltonian engineering algorithm, namely CHEM, that addresses the trade-off between circuit depth and accuracy. Based on a variational quantum eigensolver and hardware-efficient ansatz, our method designs the Clifford-based Hamiltonian transformation that (1) ensures a set of initial circuit parameters corresponding to the Hartree–Fock energy can be generated, (2) effectively maximizes the initial energy gradient with respect to circuit parameters, (3) imposes negligible overhead for classical processing and does not require additional quantum resources, and (4) is compatible with any circuit topology. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach using a quantum hardware emulator, achieving chemical accuracy for systems as large as 12 qubits with fewer than 30 two-qubit gates. Our Clifford-based Hamiltonian engineering approach offers a promising avenue for practical quantum computational chemistry on near-term quantum devices.