Simulating Dynamic Material Properties on Near-Term Quantum Computers

Dynamic simulation of controllable electronic properties of materials offers insight into how to harness such tunability for use in myriad technologies. Recent successes have been achieved in computing static properties of small molecules on currently available quantum computers, however, simulating dynamical properties still remains a challenge. In this work, we demonstrate successful simulation of time-dependent magnetization in a simplified model of an atomically-thin two-dimensional material on IBM’s Q16 Melbourne quantum processor and Rigetti’s Aspen quantum processor. Near overlap between experimental results from the quantum computer and those theoretically derived from simulated noisy qubits indicates there is a good understanding of the largest sources of error currently faced on available quantum computers. This early proof-of-concept gives hope that near-future quantum computers, capable of simulating larger systems, may soon be able to give insights into the dynamic control of tunable electronic properties in material.