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Friday, October 27, 2017
On October 23, Google’s researchers released a program called OpenFermion to help chemists who want to simulate molecules on quantum computers.
On more powerful versions of normal computers scientists can simulate different systems. However, for chemists who want to understand the full workings of a molecule, even the most powerful computers wouldn’t be able to solve the equations given to it before the universe ends. Quantum computing uses phenomena from the science of the very small, quantum mechanics, such as superposition and entanglement, to solve certain problems more efficiently, including simulating molecules.
As quantum computers become more and more capable, this idea of using them to simulate molecules is becoming closer and closer to reality. However, chemists often don’t have the necessary background knowledge in quantum computing to use the appropriate algorithm, or set of instructions for the computer, to solve their problem. At the same time, Google is anticipating showing definitively that quantum computers are more powerful than normal computers (or quantum supremacy) and is building larger and more powerful quantum computers.
OpenFermion helps generate the appropriate algorithm for a quantum computer to simulate a chemical molecule. The program is open source and available on GitHub, a website which provides a way for users to publicly collaborate on code. It pieces together the correct algorithms needed to simulate the molecule based on the problem given. Microsoft announced a similar project in September, though not nearly as many details were given, and their project was not open source. People are encouraged to contribute to the OpenFermion GitHub project.