Spiers Memorial Lecture: Quantum chemistry, classical heuristics, and quantum advantage

Abstract

We describe the problems of quantum chemistry, the intuition behind classical heuristic methods used to solve them, a conjectured form of the classical complexity of quantum chemistry problems, and the subsequent opportunities for quantum advantage. This article is written for both quantum chemists and quantum information theorists. In particular, we attempt to summarize the domain of quantum chemistry problems as well as the chemical intuition that is applied to solve them within concrete statements (such as a classical heuristic cost conjecture) in the hope that this may stimulate future analysis.