James McClain

PySCF: the Python‐based simulations of chemistry framework

Python‐based simulations of chemistry framework (PySCF) is a general‐purpose electronic structure platform designed from the ground up to emphasize code simplicity, so as to facilitate new method development and enable flexible computational workflows. The package provides a wide range of tools to support simulations of finite‐size systems, extended systems with periodic boundary conditions, low‐dimensional periodic systems, and custom Hamiltonians, using mean‐field and post‐mean‐field methods with standard Gaussian basis functions. To ensure ease of extensibility, PySCF uses the Python language to implement almost all of its features, while computationally critical paths are implemented with heavily optimized C routines. Using this combined Python/C implementation, the package is as efficient as the best existing C or Fortran‐based quantum chemistry programs. In this paper, we document the capabilities and design philosophy of the current version of the PySCF package. WIREs Comput Mol Sci 2018, 8:e1340. doi: 10.1002/wcms.1340

Gaussian-Based Coupled-Cluster Theory for the Ground-State and Band Structure of Solids

We present the results of Gaussian-based ground-state and excited-state equation-of-motion coupled-cluster theory with single and double excitations for three-dimensional solids. We focus on diamond and silicon, which are paradigmatic covalent semiconductors. In addition to ground-state properties (the lattice constant, bulk modulus, and cohesive energy), we compute the quasiparticle band structure and band gap. We sample the Brillouin zone with up to 64 k-points using norm-conserving pseudopotentials and polarized double- and triple-ζ basis sets, leading to canonical coupled-cluster calculations with as many as 256 electrons in 2176 orbitals.

Low Depth Quantum Simulation of Electronic Structure

Quantum simulation of the electronic structure problem is one of the most researched applications of quantum computing. The majority of quantum algorithms for this problem encode the wavefunction using N Gaussian orbitals, leading to Hamiltonians with O(N^(4)) second-quantized terms. We avoid this overhead and extend methods to the condensed phase by utilizing a dual form of the plane wave basis which diagonalizes the potential operator, leading to a Hamiltonian representation with O(N^(2)) second-quantized terms. Using this representation we can implement single Trotter steps of the Hamiltonians with linear gate depth on a planar lattice. Properties of the basis allow us to deploy Trotter and Taylor series based simulations with respective circuit depths of O(N^(7/2)) and O(N^(8/3)) for fixed charge densities - both are large asymptotic improvements over all prior results. Variational algorithms also require significantly fewer measurements to find the mean energy in this basis, ameliorating a primary challenge of that approach. We conclude with a proposal to simulate the uniform electron gas (jellium) using a low depth variational ansatz realizable on near-term quantum devices. From these results we identify simulations of low density jellium as a promising first setting to explore quantum supremacy in electronic structure.

Spectral functions of the uniform electron gas via coupled-cluster theory and comparison to the G W and related approximations

We use ab initio coupled-cluster theory to compute the spectral function of the uniform electron gas at a Wigner-Seitz radius of r_s=4. The coupled-cluster approximations we employ go significantly beyond the diagrammatic content of state-of-the-art GW theory. We compare our calculations extensively to GW and GW-plus-cumulant theory, illustrating the strengths and weaknesses of these methods in capturing the quasiparticle and satellite features of the electron gas. Our accurate calculations further allow us to address the long-standing debate over the occupied bandwidth of metallic sodium. Our findings indicate that the future application of coupled-cluster theory to condensed phase material spectra is highly promising.

Lowering of the complexity of quantum chemistry methods by choice of representation

The complexity of the standard hierarchy of quantum chemistry methods is not invariant to the choice of representation. This work explores how the scaling of common quantum chemistry methods can be reduced using real-space, momentum-space, and time-dependent intermediate representations without introducing approximations. We find the scalings of exact Gaussian basis Hartree-Fock theory, second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory, and coupled cluster theory (specifically, linearized coupled cluster doubles and the distinguishable cluster approximation with doubles) to be O(N3), O(N3), and O(N5), respectively, where N denotes the system size. These scalings are not asymptotic and hold over all ranges of N.

Gaussian and plane-wave mixed density fitting for periodic systems

We introduce a mixed density fitting scheme that uses both a Gaussian and a plane-wave fitting basis to accurately evaluate electron repulsion integrals in crystalline systems. We use this scheme to enable efficient all-electron Gaussian based periodic density functional and Hartree-Fock calculations.