Postponing the orthogonality catastrophe: efficient state preparation for electronic structure simulations on quantum devices

Norm Tubman, NASA Ames Research Center

Research Scientist, Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL)

Friday, November 22, 2019
4:00 – 5:00pm
BAG 261

Despite significant work on resource estimation for quantum simulation of electronic systems, the challenge of preparing states with sufficient ground state support has so far been largely neglected. We investigate this issue in several systems of interest, including organic molecules, transition metal complexes, the uniform electron gas and Hubbard models. Our approach uses a state-of-the-art classical technique for high-fidelity ground state approximation. We find that easy-to-prepare single Slater determinants such as the Hartree-Fock state often have surprisingly robust support on the ground state for many applications of interest. For the most difficult systems, single-determinant reference states may be insufficient, but low-complexity reference states may suffice. For this we introduce a method for preparation of multi-determinant states on quantum computers.

Join the seminar via zoom:
https://washington.zoom.us/j/883514479
Meeting ID: 883 514 479