A Method to Calculate Correlation for Density Functional Theory on a Quantum Processor

Understand

An extension of the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) method is presented where a quantum computer generates an accurate exchange-correlation potential for a Density Functional Theory (DFT) simulation on classical hardware.

• The method enables efficient simulations of quantum systems by interweaving calculations on classical and quantum resources.
• DFT is implemented on classical hardware, which enables the efficient representation of and operation on quantum systems while being formally exact.
• The portion of the simulation operating on quantum hardware produces an accurate exchange-correlation potential but only requires relatively short depth quantum circuits.