Non-adiabatic quantum dynamics with fermionic subspace-expansion algorithms on quantum computers

Abstract

We introduce a novel computational framework for excited-states molecular quantum dynamics simulations driven by quantum computing-based electronic-structure calculations. This framework leverages the fewest-switches surface-hopping method for simulating the nuclear dynamics, and calculates the required excited-state transition properties with different flavors of the quantum subspace expansion and quantum equation-of-motion algorithms. We apply our method to simulate the collision reaction between a hydrogen atom and a hydrogen molecule. For this system, we critically compare the accuracy and efficiency of different quantum subspace expansion and equation-of-motion algorithms and show that only methods that can capture both weak and strong electron correlation effects can properly describe the non-adiabatic effects that tune the reactive event.