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We explore the use of symmetry-adapted perturbation theory (SAPT) as a simple and efficient means to compute interaction energies between large molecular systems with a hybrid method combing NISQ-era quantum...

We explore the use of symmetry-adapted perturbation theory (SAPT) as a simple and efficient means to compute interaction energies between large molecular systems with a hybrid method combing NISQ-era quantum and classical computers. From the one-and two-particle reduced density matrices of the monomer wavefunctions obtained by the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE), we compute SAPT contributions to the interaction energy [SAPT(VQE)]. At first order, this energy yields the electrostatic and exchange contributions for non-covalently bound systems. We empirically find from ideal statevector simulations that the SAPT(VQE) interaction energy components display orders of magnitude lower absolute errors than the corresponding VQE total energies. Therefore, even with coarsely optimized low-depth VQE wavefunctions, we still obtain sub kcal/mol accuracy in the SAPT interaction energies. In SAPT(VQE), the quantum requirements, such as qubit count and circuit depth, are lowered by performing computations on the separate molecular systems. Furthermore, active spaces allow for large systems containing thousands of orbitals to be reduced to a small enough orbital set to perform the quantum portions of the computations. We benchmark SAPT(VQE) (with the VQE component simulated by ideal state-vector simulators) against a handful of small multi-reference dimer systems and the iron center containing human cancer-relevant protein lysine-specific demethylase 5 (KDM5A).

The computation of interaction energies on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers appears to be challenging with straightforward application of existing quantum algorithms. For example, use of the standard supermolecular method with the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) would require extremely precise resolution of the total energies of the fragments to provide for accurate subtraction to the interaction energy. Here we present a symmetry-adapted perturbation theory (SAPT) method that may provide interaction energies with high quantum resource efficiency. Of particular note, we present a quantum extended random-phase approximation (ERPA) treatment of the SAPT second-order induction and dispersion terms, including exchange counterparts. Together with previous work on first-order terms, this provides a recipe for complete SAPT(VQE) interaction energies up to second order. The SAPT interaction energy terms are computed as first-level observables with no subtraction of monomer energies invoked, and the only quantum observations needed are the the VQE one-and two-particle density matrices. We find empirically that SAPT(VQE) can provide accurate interaction energies even with coarsely optimized, low circuit depth wavefunctions from the quantum computer, simulated through ideal statevectors. The errors on the total interaction energy are orders of magnitude lower than the corresponding VQE total energy errors of the monomer wavefunctions.