A Few Qubits Go a Long Way

Few-qubit quantum computers that can surpass classical computers are about to reach the laboratory, and researchers are itching to apply them to real-world problems. One of the first areas these devices promise to impact is simulating chemical systems, whose quantum nature makes them difficult to model using classical computers. In anticipation of this application, a collaboration between two Californian teams, one led by Tyler Takeshita, at Mercedes-Benz Research and Development North America, and the other by Jarrod McClean at Google, have demonstrated a new computational approach to high-fidelity quantum chemistry simulations that uses fewer qubits than other techniques.