Computer Technology in Quantum Chemistry

Isaiah Shavitt

Man‐Hong Yung, Jorge Casanova, Antonio Mezzacapo +4 more

Over the last few decades, quantum chemistry has progressed through the development of computational methods based on modern digital computers. However, these methods can hardly fulfill the exponentially-growing resource requirements when applied to large quantum systems. As pointed out by Feynman, this restriction is intrinsic to all computational models based on classical physics. Recently, the rapid advancement of trapped-ion technologies has opened new possibilities for quantum control and quantum simulations. Here, we present an efficient toolkit that exploits both the internal and motional degrees of freedom of trapped ions for solving problems in quantum chemistry, including molecular electronic structure, molecular dynamics, and vibronic coupling. We focus on applications that go beyond the capacity of classical computers, but may be realizable on state-of-the-art trapped-ion systems. These results allow us to envision a new paradigm of quantum chemistry that shifts from the current transistor to a near-future trapped-ion-based technology.

Dave Wecker, Bela Bauer, Bryan K. Clark +2 more

As quantum computing technology improves and quantum computers with a small but non-trivial number of N ≥ 100 qubits appear feasible in the near future the question of possible applications of small quantum computers gains importance. One frequently mentioned application is Feynman’s original proposal of simulating quantum systems, and in particular the electronic structure of molecules and materials. In this paper, we analyze the computational requirements for one of the standard algorithms to perform quantum chemistry on a quantum computer. We focus on the quantum resources required to find the ground state of a molecule twice as large as what current classical computers can solve exactly. We find that while such a problem requires about a ten-fold increase in the number of qubits over current technology, the required increase in the number of gates that can be coherently executed is many orders of magnitude larger. This suggests that for quantum computation to become useful for quantum chemistry problems, drastic algorithmic improvements will be needed.

Colin P. Williams

Vasileios Armaos, Dimitrios A. Badounas, Paraskevas Deligiannis +1 more

Dave Wecker, Bela Bauer, Bryan K. Clark +2 more

As quantum computing technology improves and quantum computers with a small but non-trivial number of N > 100 qubits appear feasible in the near future the question of possible applications of small quantum computers gains importance. One frequently mentioned application is Feynman's original proposal of simulating quantum systems, and in particular the electronic structure of molecules and materials. In this paper, we analyze the computational requirements for one of the standard algorithms to perform quantum chemistry on a quantum computer. We focus on the quantum resources required to find the ground state of a molecule twice as large as what current classical computers can solve exactly. We find that while such a problem requires about a ten-fold increase in the number of qubits over current technology, the required increase in the number of gates that can be coherently executed is many orders of magnitude larger. This suggests that for quantum computation to become useful for quantum chemistry problems, drastic algorithmic improvements will be needed.