An international team of researchers from the Universities of Sydney, Bristol, Harvard and Haverford College have demonstrated a new quantum algorithm that dramatically reduces the requirements for quantum resources. Using a small-scale reconfigurable photonic quantum processor they successfully calculated some important molecular properties of the Helium Hydride molecule. In the future, much larger molecules will be studied using with only a few tens of qubits, in contract to the millions or billions of quantum bits required today.
This approach is likely to serve as the blueprint for quantum eigensolvers and could lead to the first practical quantum enhanced calculation long before previously anticipated.