Accurate and efficient ab initio Quantum Chemistry calculations on current and near-term noisy intermediate-scale Quantum Computers for relevant chemical problems

Quantum computing has the potential to provide an exponential speedup

compared to classical computers, but the practical implementation is still in its infancy.

Two central questions are:

(1) in which field the current noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) hardware

can provide benefits compared to classical computers and

(2) which methods and algorithms enable this advantage?

The aim of this project is to answer these questions by enabling

accurate and efficient Quantum Chemistry calculations on current and near-term Quantum Computers

for relevant chemical and physical problems.

This paves the road to simulate strongly correlated electron systems of

high scientific and economical interest, where

accurate approaches are needed to understand groundbreaking chemical and physical phenomena,

like high-temperature superconductivity, photosynthesis or nitrogen fixation.

It will be achieved by developing and implementing novel quantum algorithms

based on the combination of the transcorrelated (TC) method

and a complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF) embedding approach.

The TC method will reduce the necessary quantum resources by

providing accurate results for a small strongly correlated region already with small basis sets.

While CASSCF will allow to target more realistic systems by embedding the

correlated region self-consistently in a larger environment, which is efficiently described

by inexpensive mean-field approaches.

This project has the potential to go beyond the state-of-the-art by:

(a) pushing the boundaries of currently possible quantum chemical calculations,

allowing further theoretical understanding and practical design of quantum materials

and (b) pave the road toward scientific and economical relevance of quantum computing

already in the NISQ era.