Using Quantum Computers for Quantum Simulation

Understand

Numerical simulation of quantum systems is crucial to further our understanding of natural phenomena.

• Many systems of key interest and importance, in areas such as superconducting materials and quantum chemistry, are thought to be described by models which we cannot solve with sufficient accuracy, neither analytically nor numerically with classical computers.
• Using a quantum computer to simulate such quantum systems has been viewed as a key application of quantum computation from the very beginning of the field in the 1980s.
• Moreover, useful results beyond the reach of classical computation are expected to be accessible with fewer than a hundred qubits, making quantum simulation potentially one of the earliest practical applications of quantum computers.