Microsoft Enhances Quantum Development Kit with Addition from 1QBit to Chemistry Library

(MicrosoftBlog) Microsoft has announced it is continuing enhance the Microsoft Quantum Development Kit with new capabilities for real-world quantum computer programming. The recent Quantum Development Kit update includes a new contribution to our chemistry library from their partner 1QBit. In the 0.7 update, Microsoft also introduced a new numerics library, Q# language features, and further expansion of our Quantum Katas with community contributions.
The library also allows interoperating with classical chemistry simulation and modeling tools to gain new insights how to build solutions on quantum computers. With this month’s update, the Microsoft Quantum Chemistry Library is enhanced by supporting unitary coupled cluster methods (UCC) and variational quantum eigensolvers (VQE), the latter being an open source contribution from our Microsoft Quantum Network partner, 1QBit. The new features UCC and VQE are additions to the expanding repertoire of techniques that are available to study quantum chemistry problems with the Quantum Development Kit. UCC is a method for preparing molecular ground-states for quantum simulation, VQE is a method for evaluating molecular energies that allows to trade circuit depth against number of experiments and that allows to leverage classical optimization techniques for initial state preparation.