Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Computational complexity

Why quantum chemistry is hard

Nature Physics volume 5, pages 707–708 (2009)Cite this article

The burgeoning field of quantum information science is not only about building a working device. Already we can learn a lot by thinking about how computation works under the rule of quantum mechanics.

As someone who studies quantum computing, I'm often asked whether I worry that useful quantum computers will never be built in our lifetimes — and hence, that all the research devoted to studying these hypothetical devices will have been wasted. I try to convey that the real reason to study quantum computing has little to do with the distant prospect of building a machine that could factor 10,000-digit numbers in an instant. Rather, it's the transformative insights that we get right now into physics and computation. And there are few better illustrations of such insights than that provided by the work of Norbert Schuch and Frank Verstraete, reported on page 732 of this issue (N. Schuch and F. Verstraete, Nature Phys. 5, 732; 2009).

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Complexity zoo.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scott Aaronson is in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA. aaronson@csail.mit.edu,

    Scott Aaronson

Authors
  1. Scott Aaronson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Aaronson, S. Why quantum chemistry is hard. Nature Phys 5, 707–708 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1415

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1415

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing