Assessing Ground State Energy of Molecules and Energy Profile of the NH3 Capturing CO2 System Using the Quantum Computing Algorithms

Molecule size correlates with the number of electrons on electronic energies and strength of anharmonicity on vibrational properties, however, it is challenging to address using classical computing. In this study, variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) algorithm was implemented on a quantum simulator to quantify electronic and vibrational energies and reaction pathways of CO2 + NH3 = NH2COOH. The VQE-based Hartree-Fock-Embedding algorithm was adopted to benchmark electronic energies for a series of molecules (doi.org/10.1063/5.0188249) and quantify the reaction energy profile of the CO2 capture reaction (doi.org/10.1116/5.0137750). The generated reaction profile is in good agreement with the classical high-level Coupled-Cluster-Singles-and-Doubles (CCSD) results. The quantum computing algorithm also helps enhance the calculation of vibrational ground-state energies by considering the many-body coupling using the Vibrational Self-Consistent Field method, providing results for CO2 and NH3 molecules with accuracy comparable to the direct diagonalization method. Our approach indicates quantum computing can be applied to solve practical problems.