Showing that Helium is Monatomic Using PennyLane

[jli0108]

Team Name: jli0108

Project Description:

One of the most promising applications for quantum computers, especially in the NISQ era, is the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) for solving problems in computational chemistry. While most molecular dynamics simulations today are performed using high performance computing systems, quantum computers have the potential for speedup, since the simulation of quantum circuits is in general classically intractable.

In this project, we use the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) to show that helium is monatomic. We simulate this experiment classically using PennyLane's built in functionality. The computed energy decreases monotonically with bond length, which shows that helium, like other noble gases, is monatomic (without consideration of the helium dimer which is not very stable).

Presentation:

https://github.com/jli0108/qhack-2022/blob/main/qhack.ipynb

Source code:

https://github.com/jli0108/qhack-2022

Which challenges/prizes would you like to submit your project for?

Quantum Chemistry Challenge