When a plant turns a splash of sunlight into a new leaf, that process is more complicated than the latest SpaceX launch, the stock market or brain surgery.
That process, unfolding inside a molecule called the photosynthetic center, involves hundreds of thousands of movements of atoms and electrons. For scientists trying to model it on an ordinary computer, that’s potentially the equivalent of 100 years’ worth of computing hours.
“The underlying mathematics increases in complexity exponentially,” said Prof. David Mazziotti, a theoretical chemist at the University of Chicago. “Trying to pack all that information into a classical computer will run you out of room very quickly.”
Mazziotti is part of a team of scientists working to find ways to use an entirely different tool to run these kinds of simulations: a quantum computer. Led by Prof. Sabre Kais of Purdue University, the team just received a second round of funding from the U.S. Department of Energy for $3 million over three years as part of the department’s program supporting quantum information science research.
In addition to insights that could lead the way to new chemical discoveries, the team hopes to lay the groundwork for quantum computing as a whole. “There’s something fundamental about challenges in quantum chemistry space; if we can solve some of these problems, that’s often felt to be a landmark area that would have a potentially revolutionary impact on the way computing is done in the future,” said Kais.