ABSTRACT
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 test bed for possible industrial applications. We finally analyze the error scaling of the estimated polarizabilities obtained by the proposed analytical derivative versus the numerical derivative obtained by the finite difference. Numerical calculations suggest that our analytical derivative requires fewer measurements (runs) on quantum computers than the numerical derivative to achieve the same fixed accuracy.
ABSTRACT
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. The numerical demonstrations with a two-dimensional H2 + system and a H-C-N system exemplify two possible advantages of our proposed method: (1) the optimized nuclear positions can be specified with a small number of observations (quantum measurements) and (2) the global minimum structure of nuclei can be obtained without starting from any sophisticated initial structure and getting stuck in the local minima. This method is considered to be suitable for quantum computers, the development of which will realize its application as a powerful method.
ABSTRACT
Elucidating photochemical reactions is vital to understanding various biochemical phenomena and developing functional materials such as artificial photosynthesis and organic solar cells, albeit with notorious difficulty in 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 multiconfigurational 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 state-averaged 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 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 CI points. Our results illustrate the possibility of leveraging quantum computers for studying photochemical reactions.
ABSTRACT
A pure quantum state can fully describe thermal equilibrium as long as one focuses on local observables. The thermodynamic entropy can also be recovered as the entanglement entropy of small subsystems. When the size of the subsystem increases, however, quantum correlations break the correspondence and mandate a correction to this simple volume law. The elucidation of the size dependence of the entanglement entropy is thus essentially important in linking quantum physics with thermodynamics. Here we derive an analytic formula of the entanglement entropy for a class of pure states called cTPQ states representing equilibrium. We numerically find that our formula applies universally to any sufficiently scrambled pure state representing thermal equilibrium, i.e., energy eigenstates of non-integrable models and states after quantum quenches. Our formula is exploited as diagnostics for chaotic systems; it can distinguish integrable models from non-integrable models and many-body localization phases from chaotic phases.
