Recompilation-enhanced simulation of electron–phonon dynamics on IBM quantum computers

Abstract

Simulating quantum systems is believed to be one of the first applications for which quantum computers may demonstrate a useful advantage. For many problems in physics, we are interested in studying the evolution of the electron–phonon Hamiltonian, for which efficient digital quantum computing schemes exist. Yet to date, no accurate simulation of this system has been produced on real quantum hardware. In this work, we consider the absolute resource cost for gate-based quantum simulation of small electron–phonon systems as dictated by the number of Trotter steps and bosonic energy levels necessary for the convergence of dynamics. We then apply these findings to perform experiments on IBM quantum hardware for both weak and strong electron–phonon coupling. Despite significant device noise, through the use of approximate circuit recompilation we obtain electron–phonon dynamics on current quantum computers comparable to exact diagonalisation. Our results represent a significant step in utilising near term quantum computers for simulation of quantum dynamics and highlight the novelty of approximate circuit recompilation as a tool for reducing noise.