Trapped-ion quantum simulation of chemical dynamics
Abstract
This project will enable accurate quantum simulation of ultra-fast, open chemical dynamics that are intractable with conventional computers.Chemistry and materials science are among the most promising applications of using quantum mechanical systems to process information. They are widely thought to be the first practical uses of quantum computers, promising to accelerate the discovery of newmedicines, fuels, and materials for energy conversion and storage. However, almost all current algorithms for simulating chemistry on quantum computers rely on programmable, error-corrected quantum computers. Realizing such devices that are able to solve computational challenges in chemistry will require hardware improvements by orders of magnitude above current-generation devices; analyses indicate that many physical qubits will be necessary for each fault-tolerant qubit, posing a resource penalty that far outstrips device sizes likely to be available in the near future.We will address this challenge by developing a novel, analog quantum simulation scheme that provides order-of-magnitude savings in quantum resources compared to all other quantum computing approaches to quantum chemistry. By building on our validated mixed-qudit-boson approach, we will develop quantum-simulation techniques for solving the mostdifficult problems in computational chemistry, those where light and environmental interactions drive complicated, entangled dynamics of both nuclei and electrons. Such non-adiabatic and open-quantum-system dynamics problems underpin photochemistry, solar cells, and atmospheric chemistry, including the unusual reactions that aircraft and spacecraft are exposed to in the upper atmosphere.We will achieve high resource efficiency by elevating the otherwise under-used bosonic degrees of freedom in trapped-ion quantum computers into critical components in quantum simulation, making our algorithm deployable on near-term quantum hardware. We aim to achieve the next critical milestone in quantum computing: quantum advantage, i.e., using a quantum simulator to outperform any classical computational approach on a problem of practical importance.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Nov 08, 2024
- Source ID
- N629092412083
Entities
People
- Ting Rei Tan
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Sydney