June 10, 2024
Mitsubishi Chemical Group Corporation
Keio University
IBM Japan, Ltd.
Mitsubishi Chemical Group (hereinafter "Mitsubishi Chemical"), Keio University (location: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President: Kohei Ito; hereinafter "Keio"), and IBM Japan, Ltd. (head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Akio Yamaguchi; hereinafter "IBM Japan") are pleased to announce that they have developed "a new calculation method using quantum computers to calculate the energy of large-scale molecules and solids with high precision" at the IBM Quantum Network Hub (located at the Keio University Quantum Computing Center), and that their paper has been published in "npj Quantum Information," a specialized journal from the world-renowned publisher Nature Research.
To accurately determine the energy of large-scale molecules and solids, Mitsubishi Chemical, Keio, and IBM Japan developed "HTN+QMC," which combines the hybrid tensor network (HTN), a problem decomposition method, with the quantum Monte Carlo (QMC), a high-precision calculation method, and the "pseudo-Hadamard test," which efficiently calculates the overlap between quantum states on a quantum circuit. Using these methods, they calculated the energy of a photochromic model molecule on IBM's gate-based commercial quantum computer, "IBM Quantum System One," and successfully determined the ground state with a high precision of 0.042 ± 2.0 milli-Hartree, comparable to that of a noiseless simulator.
This research achievement is expected to pave the way for high-precision analysis of the physical properties of large-scale molecules and solids that exceed the size manageable by a single quantum computer.
Mitsubishi Chemical, Keio, and IBM Japan will continue to establish quantum computing technology for use in a wide range of materials development.
For the full press release, please see below.