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Quantum-Accelerated Density Functional Theory with Adaptive Basis Set Compression for Materials Discovery

Freederia AI Researcher

Published Nov 24, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

**Abstract:** This paper introduces a novel computational framework for accelerating Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations, a cornerstone of materials discovery research, through the integration of quantum-accelerated linear algebra and adaptive basis set compression. Our approach, termed Quantum-Accelerated Adaptive DFT (QAADFT), leverages variational quantum eigensolvers (VQEs) for optimized solution to the Kohn-Sham equations, coupled with a dynamically adjusting basis set tailored to the evolving electron density. This synergistic combination leads to significant computational speedups, particularly for complex materials exhibiting strongly correlated electronic behavior, while maintaining accuracy comparable to conventional DFT methods. The system is designed for immediate commercial application in materials design, offering a 5-10x reduction in computational time and enabling more comprehensive exploration of chemical spaces for targeted material properties.

DOI
10.5281/zenodo.17699732

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Scientific simulations demand methods combining scalability with predictive accuracy. Density Functional Theory (DFT) on High-Performance Computing (HPC) enables large-scale electronic-structure simulations but is limited by approximations affecting strongly correlated systems and band-gap predictions. Quantum computing offers a pathway to address this, though current Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) hardware remains constrained by qubit resources, noise, and execution cost. This work presents a hybrid DFT-Quantum Embedding (QDFT) framework integrating classical HPC-based DFT with a quantum electronic-structure solver. Large systems are partitioned to isolate a chemically relevant active space, treated via the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE), while the remaining degrees of freedom are described by DFT. The framework incorporates active-space selection, embedded Hamiltonian construction, symmetry preservation, operator mapping, self-consistent density updating, and modular classical-quantum coupling. We focus on noiseless quantum simulation to systematically evaluate accuracy, convergence, active-space dependence, computational cost, and HPC scalability without hardware noise. Detailed profiling identifies computational bottlenecks and highlights limitations of CPU-based quantum simulation. A QPU runtime-estimation methodology is additionally developed to assess execution requirements on actual quantum hardware. Results demonstrate quantum embedding's potential to improve selected electronic-structure properties while retaining classical HPC's scalability. Noisy quantum simulation and QPU execution remain key future directions, providing a pathway toward practical, scalable HPC-quantum hybrid simulations as hardware matures.
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The seamless integration of Density Functional Theory (DFT) with quantum variational algorithms is essential for the predictive simulation of strongly correlated materials. In this work, we present an end-to-end computational pipeline - comprising DFT geometry relaxation, non-self-consistent field (NSCF) calculations, and Wannier-based orbital localization - to prepare active-space Hamiltonians for quantum embedding. We utilize the Adaptive Variational Quantum Eigensolver (ADAPT-VQE) framework, significantly enhanced by a Greedy-Operator Commutativity Partitioning (GOCP) approach and a Taylor-expanded O(5) operator evolution strategy to efficiently manage the exponential scaling of the Hilbert space. We demonstrate this framework through a systematic benchmark study of Li-hBN, mapping the system onto qubit registers and investigating the convergence behavior as the active space is expanded from 8 to 14 spatial orbitals. Our results quantify the relationship between active-space size and computational demand, identifying a critical "scaling wall" where classical simulation costs transition from manageable to intractable. This study provides a rigorous performance baseline for the DFT-to-ADAPT-VQE workflow and offers empirical insights into the memory and processing limits currently facing hybrid quantum-classical architectures using advanced co-processing strategies.
Quantum computers open up new avenues for modelling the physical properties of materials and molecules. Density Functional Theory (DFT) is the gold standard classical algorithm for predicting these properties, but relies on approximations of the unknown universal functional, limiting its general applicability for many fundamental and technologically relevant systems. In this work we develop a hybrid quantum/classical algorithm called quantum enhanced DFT (QEDFT) that systematically constructs quantum approximations of the universal functional using data obtained from a quantum computer. We benchmark the QEDFT algorithm on the Fermi-Hubbard model, both numerically and on data from experiments on real quantum hardware. We find that QEDFT surpasses the quality of groundstate results obtained from Hartree-Fock DFT, as well as from direct application of conventional quantum algorithms such as VQE. Furthermore, we demonstrate that QEDFT works even when only noisy, low-depth quantum computation is available, by benchmarking the algorithm on data obtained from Google's quantum computer. We further show how QEDFT also captures quintessential properties of strongly correlated Mott physics for large Fermi-Hubbard systems using functionals generated on much smaller system sizes. Our results indicate that QEDFT can be applied to realistic materials and molecular systems, and has the potential to outperform the direct application of either DFT or VQE alone, without the requirement of large scale or fully fault-tolerant quantum computers.