Are Molecules Magical? Non-Stabilizerness in Molecular Bonding

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Sarkis, Matthieu, Tkatchenko, Alexandre
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866913153508442112
author Sarkis, Matthieu
Tkatchenko, Alexandre
author_facet Sarkis, Matthieu
Tkatchenko, Alexandre
contents Isolated atoms as well as molecules at equilibrium are presumed to be simple from the point of view of quantum computational complexity. Here we show that the process of chemical bond formation is accompanied by a marked increase in the quantum complexity of the electronic ground state. By studying the hydrogen dimer H$_{2}$ as a prototypical example, we demonstrate that when two hydrogen atoms form a bond, a specific measure of quantum complexity exhibits a pronounced peak that closely follows the behavior of the binding energy. This measure of quantum complexity, known as magic in the quantum information literature, reflects how difficult it is to simulate the state using classical methods. We show that the observations for H$_{2}$ also hold for a collection of other dimers, including the weakly bonded diatomic helium dimer He$_{2}$. This observation suggests that regions of strong bonding formation or breaking are also regions of enhanced intrinsic quantum complexity. This insight suggests a connection of quantum information measures to chemical reactivity and advocates the use of stretched molecules as a quantum computational resource.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_06673
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Are Molecules Magical? Non-Stabilizerness in Molecular Bonding
Sarkis, Matthieu
Tkatchenko, Alexandre
Quantum Physics
Chemical Physics
Isolated atoms as well as molecules at equilibrium are presumed to be simple from the point of view of quantum computational complexity. Here we show that the process of chemical bond formation is accompanied by a marked increase in the quantum complexity of the electronic ground state. By studying the hydrogen dimer H$_{2}$ as a prototypical example, we demonstrate that when two hydrogen atoms form a bond, a specific measure of quantum complexity exhibits a pronounced peak that closely follows the behavior of the binding energy. This measure of quantum complexity, known as magic in the quantum information literature, reflects how difficult it is to simulate the state using classical methods. We show that the observations for H$_{2}$ also hold for a collection of other dimers, including the weakly bonded diatomic helium dimer He$_{2}$. This observation suggests that regions of strong bonding formation or breaking are also regions of enhanced intrinsic quantum complexity. This insight suggests a connection of quantum information measures to chemical reactivity and advocates the use of stretched molecules as a quantum computational resource.
title Are Molecules Magical? Non-Stabilizerness in Molecular Bonding
topic Quantum Physics
Chemical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.06673