UK researchers use a quantum computer to look inside matter itself
Key Points
- Queen Mary University of London researchers ran a new form of computational spectroscopy on a quantum computer.
- The method covers static systems, systems disturbed by their environment and systems that change over time.
- The team used an ancilla-assisted Hadamard test to reconstruct a key measure of quantum behaviour.
- Demonstrations covered parity-time symmetry breaking and topological holonomy.
- Potential applications span molecular engineering, drug design and advanced materials research.
Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have used a quantum computer to carry out a new form of computational spectroscopy.
Spectroscopy tells scientists what matter is made of and how it behaves, by measuring how materials and molecules respond to energy or light.
Computational versions of the technique let researchers predict those properties through theoretical models and simulations, without touching a laboratory bench.
Conventional computers struggle badly once the system in question is quantum in nature.
The new method, which appears in Nature Communications, sets out a generalised approach to quantum computational spectroscopy that covers a far broader range of quantum systems than earlier techniques managed.
It handles simple static systems, systems that their surrounding environment disturbs, and systems that change over time.
The team reconstructed a key measure of quantum behaviour using an ancilla-assisted Hadamard test, a technique that runs on a quantum computer.
They then applied the method to two unusual quantum phenomena, parity-time symmetry breaking and topological holonomy.
Both cases sit beyond the reach of conventional spectroscopy and beyond existing quantum approaches, which is what the researchers set out to demonstrate.
Jinzhao Sun, of the School of Physical and Chemical Sciences at Queen Mary University of London, led the theoretical side of the study.
The work points towards physics, chemistry and materials science, where computational spectroscopy already helps researchers examine the properties of real or hypothetical materials ahead of any experimental production.
Those applications include molecular engineering, drug design and advanced materials research.
The study moves quantum computers away from pure calculation and towards a role as instruments for exploring complex quantum systems directly.
