Jordi Riu

In this study, we employ the variational quantum eigensolver algorithm with a multireference unitary coupled cluster ansatz to report the ground state energy of the BeH2 molecule in a geometry where strong correlation effects are significant. We consider the two most important determinants in the construction of the reference state for our ansatz. We remove redundancies in order to execute a redundancy-free calculation. In view of the currently available noisy quantum hardware, we carry out parameter optimization on a classical computer and measure the energy with optimized parameters on a quantum computer. Furthermore, in order to carry out our intended 12-qubit computation with error mitigation and post-selection on a noisy intermediate scale quantum era trapped ion hardware (the commercially available IonQ Forte-I), we perform a series of resource reduction techniques to a. decrease the number of two-qubit gates by 99.84% (from 12243 to 20 two-qubit gates) relative to the unoptimized circuit, and b. reduce the number of measurements via the idea of supercliques, while losing 2.69% in the obtained ground state energy relative to that computed classically for the same resource-optimized problem setting.

The quantum-classical hybrid variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) algorithm is among the most actively studied topics in atomic and molecular calculations on quantum computers, yet few studies address properties other than energies or account for relativistic effects. This work presents high-precision 18-qubit relativistic VQE simulations for calculating the permanent electric dipole moments (PDMs) of BeH to RaH molecules on traditional computers, and 6- and 12-qubit PDM computations for SrH on IonQ quantum devices. To achieve high precision on current noisy intermediate scale era quantum hardware, we apply various resource reduction methods, including Reinforcement Learning and causal flow preserving ZX-Calculus routines, along with error mitigation and post-selection techniques. Our approach reduces the two-qubit gate count in our 12-qubit circuit by 99.71%, with only a 2.35% trade-off in precision for PDM when evaluated classically within a suitably chosen active space. On the current generation IonQ Forte-I hardware, the error in PDM is -1.17% relative to classical calculations and only 1.21% compared to the unoptimized circuit.