Quantum Equation of Motion with Orbital Optimization for Computing Molecular Properties in Near-Term Quantum Computing.

Abstract

Determining the properties of molecules and materials is one of the premier applications of quantum computing. A major question in the field is how to use imperfect near-term quantum computers to solve problems of practical value. Inspired by the recently developed variants of the quantum counterpart of the equation-of-motion (qEOM) approach and the orbital-optimized variational quantum eigensolver (oo-VQE), we present a quantum algorithm (oo-VQE-qEOM) for the calculation of molecular properties by computing expectation values on a quantum computer. We perform noise-free quantum simulations of BeH2 in the series of STO-3G/6-31G/6-31G* basis sets and of H4 and H2O in 6-31G using an active space of four electrons and four spatial orbitals (8 qubits) to evaluate excitation energies, electronic absorption, and, for twisted H4, circular dichroism spectra. We demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can reproduce the results of conventional classical CASSCF calculations for these molecular systems.