We propose an efficient and almost optimal scheme for measuring molecular Hamiltonians in quantum chemistry on quantum computers, which requires 2N² distinct measurements in the leading order with N being the number of molecular orbitals. It achieves the state-of-the-art by improving a previous proposal by Bonet-Monroig et al. [Phys. Rev. X 10, 031064 (2020)] which exhibits 17N²/6 scaling in the leading order. We develop a novel method based on a finite projective plane to construct sets of simultaneously-measurable operators contained in molecular Hamiltonians. Each measurement only requires a depth-O(N) circuit consisting of O(N²) one- and two-qubit gates under the Jordan-Wigner and parity mapping, assuming the linear connectivity of qubits on quantum hardwares. Because evaluating expectation values of molecular Hamiltonians is one of the major bottlenecks in the applications of quantum devices to quantum chemistry, our finding is expected to accelerate such applications.

Fault-tolerant quantum computation (FTQC) is essential to robustly implement quantum algorithms and thus to maximize advantages of quantum computers. In this context, a quantum circuit is decomposed into universal gates that can be fault-tolerantly implemented, for example, Clifford+T gates. Here, T gate is usually regarded as an essential resource for quantum computation because its action cannot be simulated efficiently on classical computers. Practically, it is highly likely that only a limited number of T gates are available in the near future due to its experimental difficulty of fault-tolerant implementation. In this paper, considering this Pre-FTQC era, we investigate Clifford+T decomposition with a limited budget of T gates and propose a new model of the error of such decomposition. More concretely, we propose an algorithm to generate the most accurate Clifford+T-gate decomposition of a given single-qubit rotation gate with a fixed number of T gates. We also propose to model the error of Clifford+T decomposition using well-known depolarizing noise by considering the average of the effects of the error. We numerically verified our model successfully explains the decomposition error for a wide variety of molecules using our decomposition algorithm. Thus, we shed light on a first-stage application of quantum computers from a practical point of view and fuel further research towards what quantum computation can achieve in the upcoming future.

In this paper, we propose a cost-reduced method for finite-temperature molecular dynamics on a near-term quantum computer, Quantum Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics (QCPMD). One of the most promising applications of near-term quantum computers is quantum chemistry. It has been expected that simulations of molecules via molecular dynamics can be also efficiently performed on near-term quantum computers by applying a promising near-term quantum algorithm of the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE). However, this method may demand considerable computational costs to achieve a sufficient accuracy, and otherwise, statistical noise can significantly affect the results. To resolve these problems, we invent an efficient method for molecular time evolution inspired by Car-Parrinello method. In our method, parameters characterizing the quantum state evolve based on equations of motion instead of being optimized. Furthermore, by considering Langevin dynamics, we can make use of the intrinsic statistical noise. As an application of QCPMD, we propose an efficient method for vibrational frequency analysis of molecules in which we can use the results of the molecular dynamics calculated by QCPMD. Numerical experiments show that our method can precisely simulate the Langevin dynamics at the equilibrium state, and we can successfully predict a given molecule's eigen frequencies. Furthermore, in the numerical simulation, our method achieves a substantial cost reduction compared with molecular dynamics using the VQE. Our method achieves an efficient computation without using widely employed method of the VQE. In this sense, we open up a new possibility of molecular dynamics on near-term quantum computers. We expect our results inspire further invention of efficient near-term quantum algorithms for simulation of molecules.

We develop a quantum-classical hybrid algorithm to calculate the analytical second-order derivative of the energy for the orbital-optimized variational quantum eigensolver (OO-VQE), which is a method to calculate eigenenergies of a given molecular Hamiltonian by utilizing near-term quantum computers and classical computers. We show that all quantities required in the algorithm to calculate the derivative can be evaluated on quantum computers as standard quantum expectation values without using any ancillary qubits. We validate our formula by numerical simulations of quantum circuits for computing the polarizability of the water molecule, which is the second-order derivative of the energy with respect to the electric field. Moreover, the polarizabilities and refractive indices of thiophene and furan molecules are calculated as a testbed for possible industrial applications. We finally analyze the error-scaling of the estimated polarizabilities obtained by the proposed analytical derivative versus the numerical one obtained by the finite difference. Numerical calculations suggest that our analytical derivative may require fewer measurements (runs) on quantum computers than the numerical derivative to achieve the same fixed accuracy.

Implementing time evolution operators on quantum circuits is important for quantum simulation. However, the standard way, Trotterization, requires a huge numbers of gates to achieve desirable accuracy. Here, we propose a local variational quantum compilation (LVQC) algorithm, which allows to accurately and efficiently compile a time evolution operators on a large-scale quantum system by the optimization with smaller-size quantum systems. LVQC utilizes a subsystem cost function, which approximates the fidelity of the whole circuit, defined for each subsystem as large as approximate causal cones brought by the Lieb-Robinson (LR) bound. We rigorously derive its scaling property with respect to the subsystem size, and show that the optimization conducted on the subsystem size leads to the compilation of whole-system time evolution operators. As a result, LVQC runs with limited-size quantum computers or classical simulators that can handle such smaller quantum systems. For instance, finite-ranged and short-ranged interacting L-size systems can be compiled with O(L^0)- or O(logL)-size quantum systems depending on observables of interest. Furthermore, since this formalism relies only on the LR bound, it can efficiently construct time evolution operators of various systems in generic dimension involving finite-, short-, and long-ranged interactions. We also numerically demonstrate the LVQC algorithm for one-dimensional systems. Employing classical simulation by time-evolving block decimation, we succeed in compressing the depth of a time evolution operators up to 40 qubits by the compilation for 20 qubits. LVQC not only provides classical protocols for designing large-scale quantum circuits, but also will shed light on applications of intermediate-scale quantum devices in implementing algorithms in larger-scale quantum devices.

A non-adiabatic nuclear wavepacket dynamics simulation of the H₂O⁺ de-excitation process is performed based on electronic structure calculations using the variational quantum eigensolver. The adiabatic potential energy surfaces and non-adiabatic coupling vectors are computed with algorithms for noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices, and time propagation is simulated with conventional methods for classical computers. The results of non-adiabatic transition dynamics from the B^~ state to A^~ state reproduce the trend reported in previous studies, which suggests that this quantum-classical hybrid scheme may be a useful application for noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices.

Elucidating photochemical reactions is vital to understand various biochemical phenomena and develop functional materials such as artificial photosynthesis and organic solar cells, albeit its notorious difficulty by both experiments and theories. The best theoretical way so far to analyze photochemical reactions at the level of ab initio electronic structure is the state-averaged multi-configurational self-consistent field (SA-MCSCF) method. However, the exponential computational cost of classical computers with the increasing number of molecular orbitals hinders applications of SA-MCSCF for large systems we are interested in. Utilizing quantum computers was recently proposed as a promising approach to overcome such computational cost, dubbed as SA orbital-optimized variational quantum eigensolver (SA-OO-VQE). Here we extend a theory of SA-OO-VQE so that analytical gradients of energy can be evaluated by standard techniques that are feasible with near-term quantum computers. The analytical gradients, known only for the state-specific OO-VQE in previous studies, allow us to determine various characteristics of photochemical reactions such as the minimal energy (ME) points and the conical intersection (CI) points. We perform a proof-of-principle calculation of our methods by applying it to the photochemical cis-trans isomerization of 1,3,3,3-tetrafluoropropene. Numerical simulations of quantum circuits and measurements can correctly capture the photochemical reaction pathway of this model system, including the ME and CI points. Our results illustrate the possibility of leveraging quantum computers for studying photochemical reactions.

The eigenspectrum of a non-normal matrix, which does not commute with its Hermitian conjugate, is a central issue of non-Hermitian physics that has been extensively studied in the past few years. There is, however, another characteristic of a non-normal matrix that has often been overlooked: the pseudospectrum, or the set of spectra under small perturbations. In this paper, we study the dynamics driven by the non-normal matrix (Hamiltonian) realized as a continuous quantum trajectory of the Lindblad master equation in open quantum systems and point out that the dynamics can reveal the nature of unconventional pseudospectrum of the non-normal Hamiltonian. In particular, we focus on the transient dynamics of the norm of an unnormalized quantum state evolved with the non-normal Hamiltonian, which is related to the probability for observing the trajectory with no quantum jump. We formulate the transient suppression of the decay rate of the norm due to the pseudospectral behavior and derive a non-Hermitian/non-normal analog of the time-energy uncertainty relation. We also consider two methods to experimentally realize the non-normal dynamics and observe our theoretical findings on quantum computers: one uses a technique to realize non-unitary operations on quantum circuits and the other leverages a quantum-classical hybrid algorithm called variational quantum simulation. Our demonstrations using cloud-based quantum computers provided by IBM Quantum exhibit the frozen dynamics of the norm in transient time, which can be regarded as a non-normal analog of the quantum Zeno effect.

A new concept of the molecular structure optimization method based on quantum dynamics computations is presented. Nuclei are treated as quantum mechanical particles, as are electrons, and the many-body wave function of the system is optimized by the imaginary time evolution method. A demonstration with a 2-dimensional H₂⁺ molecule shows that the optimized nuclear positions can be specified with a small number of observations. This method is considered to be suitable for quantum computers, the development of which will realize its application as a powerful method.

The Green's function has been an indispensable tool to study many-body systems that remain one of the biggest challenges in modern quantum physics for decades. The complicated calculation of Green's function impedes the research of many-body systems. The appearance of the noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices and quantum-classical hybrid algorithm inspire a new method to calculate Green's function. Here we design a programmable quantum circuit for photons with utilizing the polarization and the path degrees of freedom to construct a highly-precise variational quantum state of a photon, and first report the experimental realization for calculating the Green's function of the two-site Fermionic Hubbard model, a prototypical model for strongly-correlated materials, in photonic systems. We run the variational quantum eigensolver to obtain the ground state and excited states of the model, and then evaluate the transition amplitudes among the eigenstates. The experimental results present the spectral function of Green's function, which agrees well with the exact results. Our demonstration provides the further possibility of the photonic system in quantum simulation and applications in solving complicated problems in many-body systems, biological science, and so on.