Møller-Plesset Perturbation Theory Calculations on Quantum Devices

Abstract

Accurate electronic structure calculations might be one of the most anticipated applications of quantum computing.The recent landscape of quantum simulations within the Hartree-Fock approximation raises the prospect of substantial theory and hardware developments in this context.Here we propose a general quantum circuit for Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (MPPT) calculations, which is a popular and powerful post-Hartree-Fock method widly harnessed in solving electronic structure problems. MPPT improves on the Hartree-Fock method by including electron correlation effects wherewith Rayleigh-Schrodinger perturbation theory. Given the Hartree-Fock results, the proposed circuit is designed to estimate the second order energy corrections with MPPT methods. In addition to demonstration of the theoretical scheme, the proposed circuit is further employed to calculate the second order energy correction for the ground state of Helium atom, and the total error rate is around 2.3%. Experiments on IBM 27-qubit quantum computers express the feasibility on near term quantum devices, and the capability to estimate the second order energy correction accurately. In imitation of the classical MPPT, our approach is non-heuristic, guaranteeing that all parameters in the circuit are directly determined by the given Hartree-Fock results. Moreover, the proposed circuit shows a potential quantum speedup comparing to the traditional MPPT calculations. Our work paves the way forward the implementation of more intricate post-Hartree-Fock methods on quantum hardware, enriching the toolkit solving electronic structure problems on quantum computing platforms.