Chairholders
Profile
Alán Aspuru-Guzik
Department of Computer Science (St. George Campus)
University of Toronto
Chair title
NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Quantum Computing
Chair program
Industrial Research Chairs program
Role
Senior Chairholder since 2019
Summary
In the near future, quantum computers of intermediate size with the potential to fulfill computational tasks that classical computers cannot achieve will become available to a growing number of research groups. Since upcoming quantum hardware will not be able to carry out fully error-proof tasks, researchers are limited to algorithms that take this fact into account.
A whole class of algorithms is based on the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE), which Dr. Aspuru-Guzik’s group introduced in 2013. The vigorous interest in VQE in the community is due to the potential of this class of algorithms to achieve accurate results even without full error correction. These existing algorithms bear the potential to provide solutions to problems in quantum chemistry, condensed matter physics and machine learning that are not accessible even for the most powerful classical computers. Until now, those algorithms were only applied in a proof-of-principle manner.
To compute real chemical systems with accurate numerical accuracy on small to intermediate near-term devices, the corresponding quantum chemical Hamiltonians have to be represented in an efficient form in order to exploit locality and symmetries of the underlying chemical system as well as possible. Efficient representations and approximations already exist for classical algorithms and have to be introduced for quantum algorithms in order to achieve accurate results on near-term devices. Full error correction will not be available, but it will still be possible to mitigate errors at least partially to improve the quality of the achieved results.
The Chair’s research aims to improve existing algorithms to be applicable to real problems in chemistry, condensed matter and machine learning on near-term quantum hardware. VQE and related algorithms are also of relevance to industrial applications where, for example, they are expected to improve the design of new materials and pharmaceutical drugs. This program is expected to strengthen quantum technologies in Canada further by the technologies developed and by the expertise it will provide to students and researchers.
Partner
Contact information
Department of Computer Science (St. George Campus)
University of Toronto
Email: aspuru@utoronto.ca
Website:
https://matter.toronto.edu/about-us/
