Exploiting locality in quantum computation for quantum chemistry

TL;DR

This paper explores how leveraging physical locality and specific transformations can improve the efficiency of quantum algorithms for quantum chemistry, potentially making quantum computations more practical for chemical property predictions.

Contribution

It combines locality principles with the Bravyi-Kitaev transformation to enhance quantum algorithm scaling for chemistry applications, supported by numerical examples.

Findings

Improved scaling of quantum algorithms using locality and Bravyi-Kitaev transformation

Numerical examples demonstrating efficiency gains

Enhanced outlook for quantum chemistry on quantum computers

Abstract

Accurate prediction of chemical and material properties from first principles quantum chemistry is a challenging task on traditional computers. Recent developments in quantum computation offer a route towards highly accurate solutions with polynomial cost, however this solution still carries a large overhead. In this perspective, we aim to bring together known results about the locality of physical interactions from quantum chemistry with ideas from quantum computation. We show that the utilization of spatial locality combined with the Bravyi-Kitaev transformation offers an improvement in the scaling of known quantum algorithms for quantum chemistry and provide numerical examples to help illustrate this point. We combine these developments to improve the outlook for the future of quantum chemistry on quantum computers.