VW Uses D-Wave 2000Q to Solve Rudimentary Quantum Chemistry Problems

(IEEESpectrum) Scientists at Volkswagen in Munich and San Francisco have used a D-Wave 2000Q quantum computer to solve rudimentary quantum chemistry problems. The VW scientists ran D-Wave computations that find the ground state energies of molecular hydrogen and the molecule lithium hydride. Both molecules are well known and well studied. What’s new is not any breakthrough chemistry discovery but rather an increasingly promising computational route to exploring chemistry in the quantum realm.
“Our goal was to get a feeling for these kinds of problems to find better methods in the future,” says Florian Neukart, principal scientist at Volkswagen Group of America in San Francisco.