29.11.2022 15:15

Emulation of hybrid quantum-classical computations on high-performance computers

Kristel Michielsen (Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen)

The variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) and the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) are hybrid quantum-classical algorithms designed for current and near-term gate-based quantum computing devices. The quantum part of the algorithm involves the computation of the energy expectation value and the classical part involves a classical optimization algorithm.

We present and analyze large-scale simulation results of VQE to calculate the ground state energy of small molecules using the massively parallel Jülich Universal Quantum Computer Simulator (JUQCS), which is emulating the operation of an ideal pen-and-paper gate-based quantum computer on a digital (super)computer.

We compare the runtime of the standard version of VQE for solving the ground state of molecules on the emulated ideal QC on a digital supercomputer and on a supposedly perfectly functioning real gate-based quantum computer.

As another example of hybrid quantum-classical simulations, we present benchmarking results for the QAOA emulated on a supercomputer and for the D-Wave quantum annealers for the tail assignment problem, a planning problem from aircraft industry.

In conclusion, we comment on the viability of running these algorithms on currently available quantum computer hardware.

Lecture Hall 1, HISKP

 

Kategorie: HISKP News, News, Kolloquium