Big Company and Big Chemical Simulation on Quantum Computer
Google conducts largest chemical simulation on a quantum computer to date
Excerpts and salient points ~
+ Developing an ability to predict chemical processes by simulating them on computers would be of great benefit to chemists—currently, they do most of it through trial and error.
A team of researchers with Google’s AI Quantum team (working with unspecified collaborators) has conducted the largest chemical simulation on a quantum computer to date.
+ Current quantum computer technology is not yet ready to take on such a challenge, of course, but computer scientists are hoping to get them there sometime in the near future. In the meantime, big companies like Google are investing in research geared toward using quantum computers once they mature. In this new effort, the team at AI Quantum focused their efforts on simulating a simple chemical process—the Hartree-Fock approximation of a real chemical system—in this particular case, a diazene molecule undergoing a reaction with hydrogen atoms, resulting in an altered configuration.
+ Figuring out how to program Google’s Sycamore quantum system was not difficult—the hard part was figuring out how to ensure the results were accurate—quantum computers are notoriously prone to errors. Validation was the real achievement of the AI Quantum team. They did it by pairing the quantum system with a classical computer. It was used to analyze the results given by the Sycamore machine and then to provide new parameters. This process was repeated until the quantum computer worked its way to a minimum value. The team also used two other checking systems, both geared toward calculating results to spot and fix errors.
Source: Phys.org. Bob Yirka, Google conducts largest chemical simulation on a quantum computer to date…
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