Quantinuum researchers resurrect an old technique, reducing resource requirements for quantum chemistry
Quantum computing promises to help us understand chemistry in its purest form – ultimately leading to a better understanding of everything from drug development to superconductors. But before we can do any of that, researchers in computational quantum chemistry have to create the basic building blocks for understanding a chemical system: they must prepare the initial state of a system, apply various effects to the system through time, then measure the resulting output.
The first problem, called “state preparation” is a tricky one – researchers have been leaning heavily on “variational” techniques to do this, but those techniques come with huge optimization costs in addition to serious scaling issues for larger systems. An older technique, called “adiabatic state preparation” promises significant speedups on quantum computers vs classical computers, but has been mostly abandoned by researchers because the typical method used for time evolution is costly and introduces too much noise. This method, called “Trotterized adiabatic time evolution”, involves splitting up time into discrete steps, which requires many, many gates, and ultimately needs error rates well out of reach for any near-term quantum computer.
Recently, researchers at Quantinuum found a way around that roadblock – they eliminated the noisy time evolution in favor of a clever averaging approach. Rather than taking a bunch of discrete time steps they simulate different interactions such that on average you get exactly the right time evolution. A nice aspect of this approach is that it has guaranteed “convergence” – ultimately this means that, unlike other approaches, it works all the time. This new approach has also been shown to be possible on near-term quantum computers: it does not require too many gates or computational time, and it scales well with the system size.
This algorithm is designed with Quantinuum’s world-leading hardware in mind, as it requires all-to-all connectivity. Combined with our industry-leading gate fidelities, this new approach is opening the door to many fascinating applications in chemistry, physics, and beyond.
Kaniah is Chief Legal Counsel and SVP of Government Relations for Quantinuum. In her previous role, she served as General Counsel, Honeywell Quantum Solutions. Prior to Honeywell, she was General Counsel, Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies, LLC, and Senior Attorney, U.S. Department of Energy. She was Lead Counsel before the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Kaniah holds a J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law and B.A., International Relations and Spanish from the College of William and Mary.
Jeff Miller is Chief Information Officer for Quantinuum. In his previous role, he served as CIO for Honeywell Quantum Solutions and led a cross-functional team responsible for Information Technology, Cybersecurity, and Physical Security. For Honeywell, Jeff has held numerous management and executive roles in Information Technology, Security, Integrated Supply Chain and Program Management. Jeff holds a B.S., Computer Science, University of Arizona. He is a veteran of the U.S. Navy, attaining the rank of Commander.
Matthew Bohne is the Vice President & Chief Product Security Officer for Honeywell Corporation. He is a passionate cybersecurity leader and executive with a proven track record of building and leading cybersecurity organizations securing energy, industrial, buildings, nuclear, pharmaceutical, and consumer sectors. He is a sought-after expert with deep experience in DevSecOps, critical infrastructure, software engineering, secure SDLC, supply chain security, privacy, and risk management.
Todd Moore is the Global Vice President of Data Encryption Products at Thales. He is responsible for setting the business line and go to market strategies for an industry leading cybersecurity business. He routinely helps enterprises build solutions for a wide range of complex data security problems and use cases. Todd holds several management and technical degrees from the University of Virginia, Rochester Institute of Technology, Cornell University and Ithaca College. He is active in his community, loves to travel and spends much of his free time supporting his family in pursuing their various passions.
Retired U.S. Army Major General John Davis is the Vice President, Public Sector for Palo Alto Networks, where he is responsible for expanding cybersecurity initiatives and global policy for the international public sector and assisting governments around the world to prevent successful cyber breaches. Prior to joining Palo Alto Networks, John served as the Senior Military Advisor for Cyber to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and served as the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy. Prior to this assignment, he served in multiple leadership positions in special operations, cyber, and information operations.
