Physics colloquium – “Quantum Simulations of Chemical Dynamics and Molecular Spectra”

Phil Richerme

Indiana University at Bloomington

Abstract: Calculating observable properties of quantum chemical systems is a promising application of quantum computers. While most quantum algorithms and experimental demonstrations to date have focused on calculations of electronic structure in molecules, we have recently developed a protocol to study nuclear dynamics processes as well. In this talk, I will describe experiments which emulate the quantum dynamics and vibrational properties of hydrogen-bonded systems. In our approach, we first treat the proton dynamics as a reduced-dimensional problem on a discretized lattice, then map its Hamiltonian to a sequence of quantum gate operations. Next, we implement these quantum gates on an ion-trap quantum computer to simulate how the proton wavepacket evolves due to the surrounding nuclear framework and electronic potential. Finally, we extract the characteristic vibrational frequencies for the proton motion using the experimentally-simulated dynamics. Our approach offers a new paradigm for simulating quantum dynamics and for computing accurate expectations values, opening the potential to study a range of chemical systems which are otherwise intractable.

Phil Richerme is an Associate Professor of Physics at Indiana University. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2012 under the direction of Gerald Gabrielse, followed by postdoctoral research with Chris Monroe at the University of Maryland. His current research focuses on the experimental quantum simulation of materials and chemical systems using 1D and 2D arrays of trapped ions. http://iontrap.physics.indiana.edu

All lectures held in CTLM102