Classical optimizers play a crucial role in determining the accuracy and convergence of variational quantum algorithms. In literature, many optimizers, each having its own architecture, have been employed expediently for different applications. In this work, we consider a few popular optimizers and assess their performance in variational quantum algorithms for applications in quantum chemistry in a realistic noisy setting. We benchmark the optimizers with critical analysis based on quantum simulations of simple molecules, such as Hydrogen, Lithium Hydride, Beryllium Hydride, water, and Hydrogen Fluoride. The errors in the ground-state energy, dissociation energy, and dipole moment are the parameters used as yardsticks. All the simulations were carried out with an ideal quantum circuit simulator, a noisy quantum circuit simulator, and a noisy simulator with noise embedded from the IBM Cairo quantum device to understand the performance of the classical optimizers in ideal and realistic quantum environments. We used the standard unitary coupled cluster (UCC) ansatz for simulations, and the number of qubits varied from two, starting from the Hydrogen molecule to ten qubits, in Hydrogen Fluoride. Based on the performance of these optimizers in the ideal quantum circuits, the conjugate gradient (CG), limited-memory Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno bound (L_BFGS)B), and sequential least squares programming (SLSQP) optimizers are found to be the best-performing gradient-based optimizers. While constrained optimization by linear approximation (COBYLA) and POWELL perform most efficiently among the gradient-free methods. However, in noisy quantum circuit conditions, Simultaneous Perturbation Stochastic Approximation (SPSA), POWELL, and COBYLA are among the best-performing optimizers.
Quantum chemistry is one of the most promising applications of quantum computers in the near future. For noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices, the quantum-classical hybrid framework based on the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) has become the method of choice. In the literature, there are many different variants of VQE, but it is not known which one is optimal for a given molecule. For this purpose, we perform a thorough benchmarking on more than ten different kinds of VQE ansatzes (in systems up to 30 qubits), based on their performance on the energy accuracy, runtime until convergen…
Quantum chemistry provides key applications for near-term quantum computing, but these are greatly complicated by the presence of noise. In this work we present an efficient ansatz for the computation of two-electron atoms and molecules within a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm. The ansatz exploits the fundamental structure of the two-electron system, and treating the nonlocal and local degrees of freedom on the quantum and classical computers, respectively. Here the nonlocal degrees of freedom scale linearly with respect to basis-set size, giving a linear ansatz with only $\mathcal{O}(1)$ c…
We lay the foundation for a benchmarking methodology for assessing current and future quantum computers. We pose and begin addressing fundamental questions about how to fairly compare computational devices at vastly different stages of technological maturity. We critically evaluate and offer our own contributions to current quantum benchmarking efforts, in particular those involving adiabatic quantum computation and the Adiabatic Quantum Optimizers produced by D-Wave Systems, Inc. We find that the performance of D-Wave's Adiabatic Quantum Optimizers scales roughly on par with classical approac…
Benchmarking VQE Configurations: Architectures, Initializations, and Optimizers for Silicon Ground State Energy
eBRAIN Lab, Division of Engineering, New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), Abu Dhabi, UAE（纽约大学阿布扎赫（NYUAD））；Center for Quantum and Topological Systems (CQTS), NYUAD Research Institute, NYUAD, Abu Dhabi, UAE（纽约大学阿布扎赫研究机构）
Quantum chemistry is a near-term application for quantum computers. This application may be facilitated by variational quantum-classical algorithms (VQCAs), although a concern for VQCAs is the large number of measurements needed for convergence, especially for chemical accuracy. Here we introduce a strategy for reducing the number of measurements (i.e., shots) by randomly sampling operators $h_i$ from the overall Hamiltonian $H = \sum_i c_i h_i$. In particular, we employ weighted sampling, which is important when the $c_i$'s are highly non-uniform, as is typical in chemistry. We integrate this…
The rapid progress of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computing underscores the need to test and evaluate new devices and applications. Quantum chemistry is a key application area for these devices, and therefore serves as an important benchmark for current and future quantum computer performance. Previous benchmarks in this field have focused on variational methods for computing ground and excited states of various molecules, including a benchmarking suite focused on performance of computing ground states for alkali-hydrides under an array of error mitigation methods. Here, we outline…
Quantum simulation of quantum chemistry is one of the most compelling applications of quantum computing. It is of particular importance in areas ranging from materials science, biochemistry and condensed matter physics. Here, we propose a full quantum eigensolver (FQE) algorithm to calculate the molecular ground energies and electronic structures using quantum gradient descent. Compared to existing classical-quantum hybrid methods such as variational quantum eigensolver (VQE), our method removes the classical optimizer and performs all the calculations on a quantum computer with faster converg…
Quantum computers are expected to be highly beneficial for chemistry simulations, promising significant improvements in accuracy and speed. The most prominent algorithm for chemistry simulations on NISQ devices is the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE). It is a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm which calculates the ground state energy of a Hamiltonian based on parametrized quantum circuits, while a classical optimizer is used to find optimal parameter values. However, quantum hardware is affected by noise, and it needs to be understood to which extent it can degrade the performance of the …
We use the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) as implemented in the Qiskit software package to compute the ground state energy of small molecules derived from water, H$_2$O, and hydrogen cyanide, HCN. The work aims to benchmark algorithms for calculating the electronic structure and energy surfaces of molecules of relevance to prebiotic chemistry, beginning with water and hydrogen cyanide, and to run them on the available simulated and physical quantum hardware. The numerical calculations of the algorithms for small quantum processors allow us to design more efficient protocols to be run in…
Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) are promising methods that leverage noisy quantum computers and classical computing techniques for practical applications. In VQAs, the classical optimizers such as gradient-based optimizers are utilized to adjust the parameters of the quantum circuit so that the objective function is minimized. However, they often suffer from the so-called vanishing gradient or barren plateau issue. On the other hand, the normalized gradient descent (NGD) method, which employs the normalized gradient vector to update the parameters, has been successfully utilized in sever…
Benchmarking numerical methods in quantum chemistry is one of the key opportunities that quantum simulators can offer. Here, we propose an analog simulator for discrete 2D quantum chemistry models based on cold atoms in optical lattices. We first analyze how to simulate simple models, like the discrete versions of H and H$_2^+$, using a single fermionic atom. We then show that a single bosonic atom can mediate an effective Coulomb repulsion between two fermions, leading to the analog of molecular Hydrogen in two dimensions. We extend this approach to larger systems by introducing as many media…
Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) offer a promising path toward using near-term quantum hardware for applications in academic and industrial research. These algorithms aim to find approximate solutions to quantum problems by optimizing a parametrized quantum circuit using a classical optimization algorithm. A successful VQA requires fast and reliable classical optimization algorithms. Understanding and optimizing how off-the-shelf optimization methods perform in this context is important for the future of the field. In this work, we study the performance of four commonly used gradient-free…
Variational quantum-classical hybrid algorithms are seen as a promising strategy for solving practical problems on quantum computers in the near term. While this approach reduces the number of qubits and operations required from the quantum machine, it places a heavy load on a classical optimizer. While often under-appreciated, the latter is a computationally hard task due to the barren plateau phenomenon in parameterized quantum circuits. The absence of guiding features like gradients renders conventional optimization strategies ineffective as the number of qubits increases. Here, we introduc…
Variational quantum algorithms are suitable for use on noisy quantum systems. One of the most important use-cases is the quantum simulation of materials, using the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE). To optimize VQE performance, a suitable parameterized quantum circuit (ansatz) must be selected. We investigate a class of ansatze that incorporates knowledge of the quantum hardware, namely the hardware efficient ansatze. The performance of hardware efficient ansatze is affected differently by noise, and our goal is to study the effect of noise on evaluating which ansatz gives more accurate re…
A High-Performance Pauli-Algebra Framework for Large-Scale Quantum Simulations
State Key Laboratory of Precision and Intelligent Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China（精密与智能化学国家重点实验室，中国科学技术大学）；Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China（合肥微尺度物质科学国家研究中心，中国科学技术大学）；Hefei National Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China（合肥国家实验室，中国科学技术大学）
Towards Arbitrary QUBO Optimization: Analysis of Classical and Quantum-Activated Feedforward Neural Networks
Fakultät für Physik und Erdsystemwissenschaften, Universität Leipzig（莱比锡大学物理与地球科学系）；Data Cybernetics（数据认知科学）；Zentrum für Optische Quantentechnologien, Universität Hamburg（汉堡大学光学量子技术中心）
By design, the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) strives to recover the lowest-energy eigenvalue of a given Hamiltonian by preparing quantum states guided by the variational principle. In practice, the prepared quantum state is indirectly assessed by the value of the associated energy. Novel adaptive derivative-assembled pseudo-trotter (ADAPT) ansatz approaches and recent formal advances now establish a clear connection between the theory of quantum chemistry and the quantum state ansatz used to solve the electronic structure problem. Here we benchmark the accuracy of VQE and ADAPT-VQE to …
Hybrid Quantum-Classical algorithms are a promising candidate for developing uses for NISQ devices. In particular, Parametrised Quantum Circuits (PQCs) paired with classical optimizers have been used as a basis for quantum chemistry and quantum optimization problems. Training PQCs relies on methods to overcome the fact that the gradients of PQCs vanish exponentially in the size of the circuits used. Tensor network methods are being increasingly used as a classical machine learning tool, as well as a tool for studying quantum systems. We introduce a circuit pre-training method based on matrix p…
We combine the fields of heuristic optimization and optimal stopping. We propose a strategy for benchmarking randomized optimization algorithms that minimizes the expected total cost for obtaining a good solution with an optimal number of calls to the solver. To do so, rather than letting the objective function alone define a cost to be minimized, we introduce a further cost-per-call of the algorithm. We show that this problem can be formulated using optimal stopping theory. The expected cost is a flexible figure of merit for benchmarking probabilistic solvers that can be computed when the opt…
Henan Key Laboratory of Quantum Information and Cryptography（河南省量子信息与密码学重点实验室）；Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院计算技术研究所）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences（北京量子信息科学研究院）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）
Quantum computing is a game-changing technology for global academia, research centers and industries including computational science, mathematics, finance, pharmaceutical, materials science, chemistry and cryptography. Although it has seen a major boost in the last decade, we are still a long way from reaching the maturity of a full-fledged quantum computer. That said, we will be in the Noisy-Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) era for a long time, working on dozens or even thousands of qubits quantum computing systems. An outstanding challenge, then, is to come up with an application that can r…
