New pre-print “Solving an Industrially Relevant Quantum Chemistry Problem on Quantum Hardware”
Simulation of quantum chemical problems is one of the most promising avenues to practical quantum advantage. However, it remains a challenge on contemporary quantum computers without error correction to reach the required ‘chemical accuracy’. Prior works have therefore focussed on very simple molecules for proof-of-principle demonstrations. Now, a collaboration of chemists and physicists have developed and demonstrated a variational algorithm integrated into a full chemical workflow that allowed chemical accuracy to be reached on an industrially relevevant molecule. The variational algorithm they used enabled large savings in measurement time, something that many such algorithms struggle with, on the trapped ion quantum computer they implemented it on. Their research was published in a pre-print on arXiv.