Simulating molecules on a cloud-based 5-qubit IBM-Q universal quantum computer

Simulating complex quantum systems is computationally expensive for classical computers due to the exponential scaling of quantum states with the number of particles. Quantum computers offer a solution by using one quantum system to simulate another. This paper demonstrates an efficient technique for transpiling the unitary evolution of quantum systems into the language of universal quantum computation using IBM's quantum computer. The authors develop code to decompose arbitrary 3-qubit gates and implement quantum simulations for a linear ordered chain and the Fenna-Matthews-Olsen (FMO) photosynthetic protein, a complex dissipative system. The method is generalizable to various molecular and other simulation settings.

S. Leontica, F. Tennie, T. Farrow