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from exponentially costly precompilation [33]. When Jordan-Wigner representation to simulate fermions on a
implemented using a unitary coupled cluster (UCC) ansatz, lattice. In both experiments presented here, we simulate the
VQE cannot be efficiently simulated classically, and dissociation of molecular hydrogen in the minimal basis
empirical evidence suggests that answers are accurate of Hartree-Fock orbitals, represented using the Bravyi-
enough to predict chemical rates [19–23]. Because VQE Kitaev transformation of the second quantized molecular
only requires short state preparation and measurement Hamiltonian [17]. As shown in Appendix A, the molecular
sequences, it has been suggested that classically intractable hydrogen Hamiltonian can be scalably written as
computations might be possible using VQE without the
overhead of error correction [22,23]. Our experiments H ¼ g0 1 þ g1 Z0 þ g2 Z1 þ g3 Z0 Z1 þ g4 Y 0 Y 1 þ g5 X0 X1 ;
substantiate this notion; the robustness of the VQE to ð1Þ
systematic device errors allows the experiment to achieve
chemical accuracy. where fXi ; Zi ; Y i g denote Pauli matrices acting on the ith
Our second experiment realizes the original algorithm qubit and the real scalars fgγ g are efficiently computable
for the quantum simulation of chemistry, introduced in functions of the hydrogen-hydrogen bond length R.
Ref. [2]. This approach involves Trotterized simulation [34] The ground-state energy of Eq. (1) as a function of R
and the quantum phase estimation algorithm (PEA) [35]. defines an energy surface. Such energy surfaces are used to
We experimentally perform this entire algorithm, including compute chemical reaction rates which are exponentially
both key components, for the first time. While PEA has sensitive to changes in energy. If accurate energy surfaces
asymptotically better scaling in terms of precision than are obtained, one can use established methods such as
VQE, long and coherent gate sequences are required for its classical Monte Carlo or molecular dynamics simulations
accurate implementation. to obtain accurate free energies, which provide the rates
The phase estimation component of the canonical directly via the Erying equation [43]. At room temperature,
quantum chemistry algorithm has been demonstrated in a relative error in energy of 1.6 × 10−3 hartree (1 kcal/mol
a photonic system [36], a nuclear magnetic resonance or 0.043 eV) translates to a chemical rate that differs
system [37], and a nitrogen-vacancy center system [38]. from the true value by an order of magnitude; therefore,
While all three experiments obtained molecular energies to 1.6 × 10−3 hartree is known as “chemical accuracy” [43].
incredibly high precision, none of the experiments imple- Our goal, then, is to compute the lowest energy eigen-
mented the propagator in a scalable fashion (e.g., using values of Eq. (1) as a function of R, to within chemical
Trotterization), as doing so requires long coherent evolu- accuracy.
tions. Furthermore, none of these experiments used more
than a single qubit or qutrit to represent the entire molecule. II. VARIATIONAL QUANTUM EIGENSOLVER
This was possible due to the use of the configuration basis,
which is not scalable but renders the experimental chal- Many popular classical approximation methods for
lenge much easier. Furthermore, all of these implementa- the electronic structure problem involve optimizing a
tions applied the logic gates with a single, totally controlled parametrized guess wave function (known as an “ansatz”)
pulse, as opposed to compiling the algorithm to a universal according to the variational principle [43]. If we para-
set of gates as we do. metrize an ansatz jφðθÞi
~ by the vector θ,
~ then the variational
There have been two previous experimental demonstra- principle holds that
tions of VQE, first in a photonic system [19] and later in an
ion trap [39]. Both experiments validated the variational hφðθÞjHjφð
~ θÞi
~
approach, and the latter implemented an ansatz based on ≥ E0 ; ð2Þ
hφðθÞjφð
~ θÞi
~
unitary coupled cluster. All prior experiments focused
on either molecular hydrogen [36,37] or helium hydride where E0 is the smallest eigenvalue of the Hamiltonian H.
[19,38,39], but none of these prior experiments employed a Accordingly, E0 can be estimated by selecting the param-
scalable qubit representation such as second quantization.
eters θ~ that minimize the left-hand side of Eq. (2).
Instead, all five prior experiments represent the Hamiltonian
While the ground-state wave function is likely to be in
in a configuration basis that cannot be efficiently decom-
superposition over an exponential number of states in the
posed as a sum of local Hamiltonians, and then exponentiate
basis of molecular orbitals, most classical approaches
this exponentially large matrix as a classical preprocessing
restrict the ansatz to the support of polynomially many
step [19,36–39].
basis elements due to memory limitations. However,
Until this work, important aspects of scalable chemistry
quantum circuits can prepare entangled states, which are
simulation such as the Jordan-Wigner transformation [40]
not known to be efficiently representable classically. In
or the Bravyi-Kitaev transformation [41,42] had never been
used to represent a molecule in an experiment; however, VQE, the state jφðθÞi
~ is parametrized by the action of a
prior experiments such as Ref. [7] have previously used the quantum circuit UðθÞ ~ on an initial state jϕi; i.e.,
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FIG. 1. Hardware and software schematic of the variational quantum eigensolver. (Hardware) micrograph shows two Xmon transmon
qubits and microwave pulse sequences to perform single-qubit rotations (thick lines), dc pulses for two-qubit entangling gates (dashed
lines), and microwave spectroscopy tones for qubit measurements (thin lines). (Software) quantum circuit diagram shows preparation of
the Hartree-Fock state, followed by application of the unitary coupled cluster ansatz in Eq. (3) and efficient partial tomography (Rt ) to
measure the expectation values in Eq. (1). Finally, the total energy is computed according to Eq. (4) and provided to a classical optimizer
which suggests new parameters.
jφðθÞi
~ ≡ UðθÞjϕi.
~ Even if jϕi is a simple product state and where the gγ are scalars and the Hγ are local Hamiltonians
UðθÞ
~ is a very shallow circuit, jφðθÞi
~ can contain complex as in Eq. (1). The initial guess θ~0 and the corresponding
many-body correlations and span an exponential number of objective value Eðθ~0 Þ are then fed to a classical greedy
standard basis states. minimization routine (e.g., gradient descent), which then
We can express the mapping UðθÞ ~ as a concatenation suggests a new setting of the parameters θ~1 . The energy
of parametrized quantum gates, U1 ðθ1 ÞU2 ðθ2 Þ…U n ðθn Þ. Eðθ~1 Þ is then measured and returned to the classical outer
In this work, we parametrize our circuit according to loop. This continues for m iterations until the energy
unitary coupled cluster theory [20,22,23]. As described
in Appendix D, unitary coupled cluster theory predicts that converges to a minimum value Eðθ~m Þ, which represents
the ground state of Eq. (1) can be expressed as the VQE approximation to E0 .
Because our experiment requires only a single varia-
tional parameter, as in Eq. (3), we elect to scan 1000
jφðθÞi ¼ e−iθX0 Y 1 j01i; ð3Þ different values of θ ∈ ½−π; πÞ in order to obtain expect-
ation values that define the entire potential energy curve.
where jϕi ¼ j01i is the Hartree-Fock (mean-field) state We do this to simplify the classical feedback routine but at
of molecular hydrogen in the representation of Eq. (1). the cost of needing slightly more experimental trials. These
As discussed in Appendix D, unitary coupled cluster expectation values are shown in Fig. 2(a) and the corre-
theory is widely believed to be classically intractable and sponding energy surfaces at different bond lengths are
is known to be strictly more powerful than the “gold shown in Fig. 2(b). The energy surface in Fig. 2(b) is
standard” of classical electronic structure theory, coupled locally optimized at each bond length to emulate an on-the-
cluster theory [43–46]. The gate model circuit that fly implementation.
performs this unitary mapping is shown in the software Figure 3(a) shows the exact and experimentally deter-
section of Fig. 1. mined energies of molecular hydrogen at different bond
VQE solves for the parameter vector θ~ with a classical lengths. The minimum energy bond length (R ¼ 0.72 Å)
optimization routine. One first prepares an initial ansatz corresponds to the equilibrium bond length, whereas the
asymptote on the right-hand part of the curve corresponds
jφðθ~0 Þi and then estimates the ansatz energy Eðθ~0 Þ by
to dissociation into two hydrogen atoms. The energy
measuring the expectation values of each term in Eq. (1)
difference between these points is the dissociation energy,
and summing these values together as
and the exponential of this quantity determines the chemi-
X cal dissociation rate. Our VQE experiment correctly pre-
EðθÞ
~ ¼ gγ hφðθÞjH
~ γ jφðθÞi;
~ ð4Þ dicts this quantity with an error of ð8 5Þ × 10−4 hartree,
γ which is below the chemical accuracy threshold. Error bars
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P. J. J. O’MALLEY et al. PHYS. REV. X 6, 031007 (2016)
FIG. 2. Variational quantum eigensolver: raw data and computed energy surface. (a) Data showing the expectation values of terms in
Eq. (1) as a function of θ, as in Eq. (3). Black lines nearest to the data show the theoretical values. While such systematic phase errors
would prove disastrous for PEA, our VQE experiment is robust to this effect. (b) Experimentally measured energies (in hartree) as a
function of θ and R. This surface is computed from (a) according to Eq. (4). The white curve traces the theoretical minimum energy; the
values of theoretical and experimental minima at each R are plotted in Fig. 3(a). Errors in this surface are given in Fig. 6.
are computed with Gaussian process regression [47], which algorithm, which in theory gives the exact answer, but in
interpolates the energy surface based on local errors from practice fails due to systematic errors.
the shot-noise-limited expectation value measurements in
Fig. 2(a). III. PHASE ESTIMATION ALGORITHM
Errors in our simulation as a function of R are shown in
Fig. 3(b). The curve in Fig. 3(b) becomes nearly flat past We also report an experimental demonstration of the
R ¼ 2.5 Å because the same angle is experimentally original quantum algorithm for chemistry [2]. Similar to
chosen for each R past this point. Note that the exper- VQE, the first step of this algorithm is to prepare the system
imental energies are always greater than or equal register in a state having good overlap with the ground state
to the exact energies due to the variational principle. of the Hamiltonian H. In our case, we begin with the
Figure 3(b) shows that VQE has substantial robustness to Hartree-Fock state jϕi. We then evolve this state under H
systematic errors. While this possibility had been pre- using a Trotterized approximation to the time-evolution
viously hypothesized [23], we report the first experimen- operator. The execution of this unitary is controlled onpan ffiffiffi
tal signature of robustness and show that it allows for a ancilla initialized in the superposition state ðj0i þ j1iÞ= 2.
successful computation of the dissociation energy. By The time-evolution operator can be approximated using
performing (inefficient) classical simulations of the circuit Trotterization [34] as
in Fig. 1, we identify the theoretically optimal value of θ at P Y ρ
each R. In fact, for this system, at every value of R there −iHt −it gγ H γ −igγ Hγ t=ρ
e ¼e γ ≈ U Trot ðtÞ ≡ γ
e ; ð5Þ
exists θ such that EðθÞ ¼ E0 . However, due to experi-
mental error, the theoretically optimal value of θ differs
substantially from the experimentally optimal value of θ. where the Hγ are local Hamiltonians as in Eq. (1) and the
This can be seen in Fig. 3(b) from the large discrepancy error in this approximation depends linearly on the time
between the green diamonds (experimental energy errors step ρ−1 [34]. Application of the propagator induces a
at theoretically optimal θ) and the red dots (experimental phase on the system register so that
energy errors at experimentally optimal θ). The exper- X X
imental energy curve at theoretically optimal θ shows an e−iHt jϕi ¼ e−iEn t jnihnj jϕi ¼ an e−iEn t jni; ð6Þ
error in the dissociation energy of 1.1 × 10−2 hartree, n n
which is more than an order of magnitude worse. One
could anticipate this discrepancy by looking at the raw where jni are eigenstates of the Hamiltonian such that
data in Fig. 2(a), which shows that the experimentally Hjni ¼ En jni and an ¼ hnjϕi. By controlling this evolu-
measured expectation values deviate considerably from tion on the ancilla superposition state, one entangles the
the predictions of theory. In a sense, the green diamonds system register with the ancilla. Accordingly, by measuring
in Fig. 3(b) show the performance of a nonvariational the phase between the j0i state and j1i state of the ancilla,
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SCALABLE QUANTUM SIMULATION OF MOLECULAR ENERGIES PHYS. REV. X 6, 031007 (2016)
(a) (b)
FIG. 3. Computed H2 energy curve and errors. (a) Energy surface of molecular hydrogen as determined by both VQE and PEA. VQE
approach shows dissociation energy error of ð8 5Þ × 10−4 hartree (error bars on VQE data are smaller than markers). PEA approach
shows dissociation energy error of ð1 1Þ × 10−2 hartree. (b) Errors in VQE energy surface. Red dots show error in the experimentally
determined energies. Green diamonds show the error in the energies that would have been obtained experimentally by running the circuit
at the theoretically optimal θ instead of the experimentally optimal θ. The discrepancy between blue and red dots provides experimental
evidence for the robustness of VQE, which could not have been anticipated via numerical simulations. The gray band encloses the
chemically accurate region relative to the experimental energy of the atomized molecule. The dissociation energy is relative to the
equilibrium geometry, which falls within this envelope.
one measures the phase En t and collapses the system digitally in iterative phase estimation, the experimentally
register to the state jni with probability jan j2. determined PEA energies in Fig. 3(a) agree exactly with
Our PEA implementation is based on a modification of theoretical simulations of Fig. 4, which differ from the exact
Kitaev’s iterative phase estimation algorithm [8,35]. The energies due to the approximation of Eq. (5). The primary
circuit we use is shown in Fig. 4 and detailed descriptions difficulty of the PEA experiment is that the controlled
of the subroutines we use to control U Trot ð2k t0 Þ on an application of U Trot ð2k t0 Þ requires complex quantum
ancilla are shown in Appendix C. The rotation ZΦðkÞ in circuitry and long coherent evolutions. Accordingly, we
Fig. 4 feeds back classical information from the prior k − 1 approximate the propagator in Eq. (5) using a single
measurements using phase kickback as Trotter step (ρ ¼ 1), which is not sufficient for chemical
accuracy. Our PEA experiment shows an error in the
X
k−1
jl dissociation energy of ð1 1Þ × 10−2 hartree.
ΦðkÞ ¼ π l−kþ1
: ð7Þ In addition to taking only one Trotter step, we perform
l¼0
2
classical simulations of the error in Eq. (5) under different
With iterative phase estimation, one measures the phase orderings of the H γ in order to find the optimal Trotter
accumulated on the system one bit at a time. Even when a0 sequences at each value of R. The Trotter sequences we use
is very small, one can use iterative phase estimation to in our experiment as well as parameters such as t0 are
measure eigenvalues if the system register remains coherent reported in Appendix C. Since this optimization is intrac-
throughout the entire phase determination. Since the table for larger molecules, our PEA protocol benefits from
Hartree-Fock state has strong overlap with the ground state inefficient classical preprocessing (unlike our VQE imple-
of molecular hydrogen (i.e., jh0jϕij2 > 0.5), we are able to mentation). Nevertheless, this is the first time the canonical
measure each bit independently with a majority-voting quantum algorithm for chemistry has been executed in its
scheme, reducing coherence requirements. For b bits, entirety and, as such, represents a significant step towards
the ground-state energy is digitally computed as a binary scalable implementations.
expansion of the measurement outcomes,
IV. EXPERIMENTAL METHODS
πX b−1
jk
Eb0 ¼ − : ð8Þ Both algorithms are implemented with a superconduct-
t0 k¼0 2kþ1 ing quantum system based on the Xmon [48], a variant of
the planar transmon qubit [49], in a dilution refrigerator
Experimentally computed energies are plotted alongside with a base temperature of 20 mK. Each qubit consists
VQE results in Fig. 3(a). Because energies are measured of a superconducting quantum interference device
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P. J. J. O’MALLEY et al. PHYS. REV. X 6, 031007 (2016)
FIG. 4. Hardware and software schematic of the Trotterized phase estimation algorithm. (Hardware) micrograph shows three Xmon
transmon qubits and microwave pulse sequences, including (i) the variable amplitude CZϕ (not used in Fig. 1) and (ii) dynamical
decoupling pulses not shown in logical circuit. (Software) state preparation includes putting the ancilla in a superposition state and
compensating for previously measured bits of the phase using the gate ZΦk (see text). The bulk of the circuit is the evolution of
the system under a Trotterized Hamiltonian controlled by the ancilla. Bit jk is determined by a majority vote of the ancilla state over
1000 repetitions.
(SQUID), which provides a tunable nonlinear inductance, accomplished with two physical gates. For CZϕ gates with
and a large X-shaped capacitor; qubit frequencies are ϕ ¼ π, the amplitude and shape of the trajectory are further
tunable up to 6 GHz and have a nonlinearity of optimized with ORBIT [50]. CZϕ≠π is necessary only in the
ðω21 − ω10 Þ ¼ −0.22 GHz. The qubits are capacitively PEA experiment (see Appendix C).
coupled to their nearest neighbors in a linear chain pattern, The gates we use to implement both VQE and PEA are
with coupling strengths of 30 MHz. Single-qubit quantum shown in Appendixes B and C. A single VQE sequence
gates are implemented with microwave pulses and tuned consists of 11 single-qubit gates and two CZπ gates. A PEA
using closed-loop optimization with randomized bench- sequence has at least 51 single-qubit gates, four CZϕ≠π
marking [50]. Qubit state measurement is performed in a gates, and ten CZπ gates; more are required when not all ϕ
dispersive readout scheme with capacitively coupled res- values are within the range that could be performed with a
onators at 6.6–6.8 GHz [4]. For details of the device single physical gate.
fabrication and conventions for reporting qubit parameters,
see Ref. [4].
Our entangling operation is a controlled-phase (CZϕ ) gate, V. CONCLUSION
accomplished by holding one of the qubits at a fixed We report the use of quantum hardware to experimen-
frequency while adiabatically tuning the other close to an tally compute the potential energy curve of molecular
avoided level crossing of the j11i and j02i states [3]. To hydrogen using both PEA and VQE. We perform the first
produce the correct phase change ϕ, the acquired phase experimental implementation of the Trotterized molecular
is measured with quantum state tomography versus the time-evolution operator and then measure energies using
amplitude of the trajectory, and the amplitude for any given PEA. Because of the costly nature of Trotterization,
ϕ is then determined via interpolation [7]. To minimize we are able to implement only a single Trotter step, which
leakage out of the computation subspace during this oper- is not enough to achieve chemical accuracy. By contrast,
ation, we increase the gate duration from the previously used our VQE experiment achieves chemical accuracy and
40 ns to 50 ns, and then shape the pulse trajectory. The shows significant robustness to certain types of error.
CZϕ gate as implemented here has a range of approximately The comparison of these two approaches suggests that
0.25–5.0 rad; for smaller values of ϕ, parasitic interactions adaptive algorithms (e.g., VQE) may generally be more
with other qubits become nontrivial, and for larger ϕ, leakage resilient for preerror corrected quantum computing than
is significant. For ϕ outside this range, the total rotation is traditional gate model algorithms (e.g., PEA).
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SCALABLE QUANTUM SIMULATION OF MOLECULAR ENERGIES PHYS. REV. X 6, 031007 (2016)
The robustness of VQE is partially a consequence of the state is of particular interest. To arrive at the standard form
adaptive nature of the algorithm; the classical outer loop of of this Hamiltonian used in quantum computation, one
VQE helps to avoid systematic errors by acting similarly to begins from a collection of nuclear charges Zi and a
the calibration loops used to tune individual quantum gates number of electrons in the system N for which the
[50]. This minimization procedure treats the energy func- corresponding Hamiltonian is written as
tional as a black box in that no assumptions are made about
the actual circuit ansatz being implemented. Thus, VQE X ∇2R X ∇2r X Zi
seeks to find the optimal parameters in a fashion that is H¼− i
− i
−
i
2M i i
2 i;j
jRi − rj j
blind to control errors, such as pulse imperfection, cross
talk, and stray coupling in the device. We observe a X Zi Zj X 1
þ þ ; ðA1Þ
remarkable increase in precision by using the experimen- i;j>i
jRi − Rj j i;j>i jri − rj j
tally optimal parameters rather than the theoretically
optimal parameters. This finding inspires hope that VQE where the positions, masses, and charges of the nuclei
may provide solutions to classically intractable problems are Ri , M i , Zi , and the positions of the electrons are ri .
even without error correction. Additionally, these results Here, the Hamiltonian is in atomic units of energy known
motivate future experiments that take “sublogical” hard- as hartree. 1 hartree is ½ℏ2 =ðme e2 a20 Þ (630 kcal/mol or
ware calibration parameters, e.g., microwave pulse shapes, 27.2 eV), where me , e, and a0 denote the mass of an
as variational parameters. electron, charge of an electron, and Bohr radius,
respectively.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This form of the Hamiltonian and its real-space discre-
The authors thank Cornelius Hempel for discussions tization are often referred to as the first quantized formu-
regarding VQE. J. R. M. is supported by the Luis W. lation of quantum chemistry. Several approaches have been
Alvarez fellowship in Computing Sciences at Lawrence developed for treating this form of the problem on a
Berkeley National Laboratory. J. R. acknowledges the Air quantum computer [9]; however, the focus of this work
Force Office of Scientific Research for support under is the second quantized formulation. To reach the second
Award No. FA9550-12-1-0046. A. A.-G. acknowledges quantized formulation, one typically first approximates the
the Army Research Office under Award No. W911NF- nuclei as fixed classical point charges under the Born-
15-1-0256 and the Defense Security Science Engineering Oppenhemier approximation, chooses a basis ϕi in which
Fellowship managed by the Office of Naval Research under to represent the wave function, and enforces antisymmetry
Award No. 00014-16-1-2008. P. J. L. acknowledges with the fermion creation and annihilation operators a†i
the support of the National Science Foundation under and aj to give
Grant No. PHY-0955518. Devices were made at the X 1X
UCSB Nanofabrication Facility, a part of the NSF-funded H¼ hpq a†p aq þ hpqrs a†p a†q ar as ; ðA2Þ
National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network, and at pq
2 pqrs
the NanoStructures Cleanroom Facility. R. Babbush,
H. N., A. A.-G., and J. M. M. designed the experiments. with
P. J. J. O. performed the experiments. J. K., R. Barends, and Z 2 X
A. M. fabricated the device. I. D. K., J. R., J. R. M., ∇r Zi
hpq ¼ dσϕp ðσÞ − ϕ ðσÞ; ðA3Þ
A. T., N. D., P. V. C., and P. J. L. helped R. Babbush and 2 i
jRi − rj q
P. J. J. O. compile quantum software and analyze data. R.
Z
Babbush, P. J. J. O., and J. M. M. co-wrote the manuscript. ϕp ðσ 1 Þϕq ðσ 2 Þϕs ðσ 1 Þϕr ðσ 2 Þ
P. J. J. O. and R. Babbush contributed equally to this hpqrs ¼ dσ 1 dσ 2 ; ðA4Þ
jr1 − r2 j
work. All other authors contributed to the fabrication
process, experimental setup, and manuscript preparation. where σ i is now a spatial and spin coordinate with
σ i ¼ ðri ; si Þ, and the standard anticommutation relations
APPENDIX A: ELECTRONIC that determine the action of a†i and aj are fa†i ; aj g ¼ δij and
STRUCTURE PROBLEM fa†i ; a†j g ¼ fai ; aj g ¼ 0. Finally, the second quantized
The central problem of quantum chemistry is to compute Hamiltonian must be mapped into qubits for implementa-
the lowest energy eigenvalue of the molecular electronic tion on a quantum device. The most common mappings
structure Hamiltonian. The eigenstates of this Hamiltonian used for this purpose are the Jordan-Wigner transformation
determine almost all of the properties of interest in a [40] and the Bravyi-Kitaev transformation [17,41,42].
molecule or material, and as the gap between the ground Using the Bravyi-Kitaev transformation, the spin
and first electronically excited state is often much larger Hamiltonian for molecular hydrogen in the minimal
than the thermal energy at room temperature, the ground (STO-6G) basis, as reported in Ref. [42], is given by
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APPENDIX B: EXPERIMENTAL
METHODS FOR VQE
For the VQE experiment, we use the qubits q0 and q1 , at
4.49 and 5.53 GHz, respectively, while all the other qubits
are detuned to 3 GHz and below. Xπ , Y π , Xπ=2 , and Y π=2
gates are 25 ns long, and pulse amplitudes and detunings
from f 10 are optimized with ORBIT; for these parameters,
additional pulse shaping (e.g., DRAG) proves unnecessary
(see Ref. [32] for details of pulse detuning and shaping).
The amplitude, trajectory, and compensating single-qubit
phases of the CZπ gate are optimized with ORBIT as well.
The duration of the CZπ is 55 ns, during which the
frequency of q0 is fixed and q1 is moved. The rotation
Zθ [the adjustable parameter in Eq. (3)] is implemented
as a phase shift on all subsequent gates. As operated here,
q0 and q1 have energy relaxation times T 1 ¼ 62.8 and
21.4 μs, and Ramsey decay times T 2 ¼ 1.1 and 1.9μs,
respectively.
FIG. 5. A flow chart describing steps required to quantum The expectation values we use to calculate the energy of
compute molecular energies using both PEA and VQE. the prepared state are measured with partial tomography;
for example, X1 X0 is measured by applying Y π=2 gates to
H ¼ f 0 1 þ f 1 Z 0 þ f 2 Z 1 þ f 3 Z2 þ f 1 Z0 Z1 each qubit prior to measurement. We emphasize that for
chemistry problems, the number of measurements scales
þ f 4 Z0 Z 2 þ f 5 Z1 Z 3 þ f 6 X 0 Z1 X 2 þ f 6 Y 0 Z 1 Y 2
polynomially [23]. The readout duration is set to 1000 ns
þ f 7 Z0 Z 1 Z 2 þ f 4 Z 0 Z 2 Z 3 þ f 3 Z 1 Z 2 Z 3 for higher fidelity (compared to Ref. [4], where the
þ f 6 X 0 Z1 X 2 Z 3 þ f 6 Y 0 Z 1 Y 2 Z3 þ f 7 Z0 Z1 Z2 Z 3 ; odd-numbered “measurement” qubits used much shorter
readout). In addition to discriminating between j0i and j1i,
ðA5Þ higher level qubit states are also measured (called j2i
for simplicity). Readout fidelities are typically > 99%
where the values ff i g depend on the fixed bond length of for j0i, and ∼95% for j1i and j2i, and measurement
the molecule. We notice that this Hamiltonian acts off probabilities are corrected for readout error. After readout
diagonally on only two qubits (the ones having tensor correction, experiments where one of the qubits is mea-
factors of 0 and 2), those set in bold in Eq. (A5). Because sured in j2i are dropped; any probability to be in j2i is set to
we start our simulations in the Hartree-Fock state, a zero and remaining probabilities are renormalized.
classical basis state, we see that the Hamiltonian sta- The circuit pulse sequence we use to implement the UCC
bilizes qubits 1 and 3 so that they are never flipped sequence in Eq. (3) is shown in Fig. 1. The experiment is
throughout the simulation. We can use this symmetry to performed in different gauges of the Bravyi-Kitaev trans-
scalably reduce the Hamiltonian of interest to the form; these correspond to the j0i (j1i) state of q0 representing
following effective Hamiltonian which acts only on the first orbital being unoccupied (occupied) or occupied
two qubits: (unoccupied), and similarly for q1 representing the parity
of the first two orbitals being even (odd) or odd (even).
~ ¼ g0 1 þ g1 Z0 þ g2 Z1 þ g3 Z0 Z1 þ g4 X0 X1 þ g5 Y 0 Y 1 ;
H In practice, a gauge change means a flip of the value of one or
ðA6Þ both qubits in the Hartree-Fock input state, and a sign change
on the relevant terms of the Hamiltonian. In the standard
gauge, the Hartree-Fock state is j01i and is prepared with an
where the values fgi g depend on the fixed bond length of
Xπ gate on q0 . Statistics from the experiment in these gauges
the molecule. We further note that the term Z0 Z1
are then averaged together. We also drop the first −Y π=2 on
commutes with all other terms in the Hamiltonian.
Since the ground state of the total Hamiltonian certainly q0 ; for an input state of either j0i or j1i, it has no effect given
has support on the Hartree-Fock state, we know the that Xπ=2 is the only gate preceding it.
contribution to the total energy of Z0 Z1 (it is given by the The energy for a given nuclear separation R is computed
by calculating the value of the Hamiltonian with the
expectation of those terms with the Hartree-Fock state).
expectation values measured for each θ and choosing the
Steps to prepare this Hamiltonian are summarized in the smallest energy. This is done for all values of R to construct
upper half of Fig. 5. the energy surface. Figure 2(a) shows the raw expectation
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P
FIG. 7. Example data for a single PEA experiment, run at
R ¼ 1.55 Å. The results are shown without phase kickback from
FIG. 6. Errors in the VQE energy surface (in hartree) as a the measurements of the previous bit. The line at Pj1i ¼ 0.5
function of bond length and rotation angle. This plot looks discriminates a measurement of 1 from 0.
somewhat like the derivative of Fig. 2(b) with respect to R and θ
because errors are greatest where the energy is most sensitive to
changes in system parameters. As in Fig. 2(b), the white curve As the CZϕ gate varies the amplitude of q1 ’s frequency
traces the theoretical minimum energy, which is seen to be in trajectory over a wide range (approximately 200–
good agreement with the data. Note that while errors in the energy 950 MHz), particular values of ϕ can be more sensitive
surface are sometimes negative, all energies are bounded from lossy parts of the q1 ’s frequency spectrum that are rapidly
below by the variational minimum. swept past and easily compensated for in the standard case
of only tuning up ϕ ¼ π. Therefore, for some values of ϕ it
is necessary to individually tune in compensating phases on
values (after readout correction), Fig. 2(b) shows the q0 . This is implemented by executing the individual term of
measured energy versus θ for each value of R, and the Hamiltonian, varying the compensating phase on q0 ,
Fig. 6 shows the errors in that surface. Error bars are and fitting for the value that minimizes the error of that
computed from a Gaussian process regression [47] applied term. After performing this careful compensation when
to the potential energy curve obtained from Fig. 2(b) using necessary, the experiment produces the bit values (0 or 1)
error estimates propagated from the shot-noise-limited for each different Hamiltonian (i.e., each separation R) at
measurements shown in Fig. 2(a). each evolution time t that match those predicted by
numerical simulation.
As operated in this experiment, q0 , q1 , and q2 have T 1
APPENDIX C: EXPERIMENTAL METHODS values of 48.1, 23.7, and 43.0 μs, and T 2 times of 1.3, 1.6,
FOR PEA and 0.8 μs, respectively. Figure 4 shows the pulses for one
The PEA experiment uses three qubits: q0 for the iteration of the PEA experiment, and Fig. 7 shows an
ancilla, and q1 and q2 for the register. Operating frequen- example of the measurement results for one value of R. The
cies are 4.56, 5.65, and 4.80 GHz for q0, q1 , and q2 , parameters at each R are given in Table I. For reference, in
respectively. Pulse tune-up is the same as for the VQE this section we include the implementations of all the terms
experiment. For the entangling gates (CZϕ between q0 and of the Bravyi-Kitaev Hamiltonian for molecular hydrogen.
q1 , and CZπ between q1 and q2 ), however, the adjacent In the following diagrams, α is the ancilla qubit (q0 in the
noninteracting qubit must be decoupled from the inter- experiment) and 0 and 1 are the register qubits (q1 and q2 in
action. For the CZπ , q0 is decoupled with paired Xπ and the experiment). We must always be aware that represent-
−Xπ pulses; this has the effect of “echoing out” any ing our terms in terms of these gates, and then in terms of
acquired state-dependent phase on q0 from q1 and vice the actual basis, is not necessarily the most efficient
versa, while minimizing stray single-qubit phases on q0 approach.
by keeping its frequency stationary. For the CZϕ , however,
q2 is detuned to frequencies significantly below the q0 − 1. CNOT
q1 interaction; while this makes single-qubit phases on q2
CNOT is implemented as a CZπ and two rotations:
harder to compensate, it is more effective at minimizing
the impact of q2 on the CZϕ gate. This combination of
decoupling methods is found to be optimal to minimize
error on the phase of q0 , which is the critical parameter in
the PEA experiment.
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TABLE I. Hamiltonian coefficients for Eq. (1) and parameters for the PEA experiment for each value of R.
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SCALABLE QUANTUM SIMULATION OF MOLECULAR ENERGIES PHYS. REV. X 6, 031007 (2016)
1 X a1 ;a2 †
ð2Þ
TðθÞ
~ ¼ θ aa a a†a a ; ðD4Þ
4 i1 ;i2 ∈occ i1 ;i2 2 i2 1 i1
a1 ;a2 ∈virt
where the occ and virt spaces are defined as the occupied
and unoccupied sites in the Hartree-Fock state and the
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P. J. J. O’MALLEY et al. PHYS. REV. X 6, 031007 (2016)
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