Quantum Equation of Motion with Orbital Optimization for Computing Molecular Properties in Near-Term Quantum Computing

Determining the properties of molecules and materials is one of the premier applications of quantum computing. A major question in the field is how to use imperfect near-term quantum computers to solve problems of practical value. Inspired by the recently developed variants of the quantum counterpart of the equation-of-motion (qEOM) approach and the orbital-optimized variational quantum eigensolver (oo-VQE), we present a quantum algorithm (oo-VQE-qEOM) for the calculation of molecular properties by computing expectation values on a quantum computer. We perform noise-free quantum simulations of BeH₂ in the series of STO-3G/6-31G/6-31G* basis sets and of H₄ and H₂O in 6-31G using an active space of four electrons and four spatial orbitals (8 qubits) to evaluate excitation energies, electronic absorption, and, for twisted H₄, circular dichroism spectra. We demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can reproduce the results of conventional classical CASSCF calculations for these molecular systems.