Since at least 1982, when physicist Richard Feynman first proposed the idea of quantum computers, scientists have dreamed of using such exotic machines to simulate quantum phenomena in atoms and molecules. Now, in a paper to be presented in March, scientists at Volkswagen in Münich and San Francisco have used a D-Wave 2000Q quantum computer to solve rudimentary quantum chemistry problems.

The results, the VW scientists say, offer a proof of principle of Feynman’s vision using the increasingly popular Canadian quantum computer system. The paper they will present in March, which they shared on the pre-print server arXiv, describes running D-Wave computations that find the ground state energies of molecular hydrogen and the molecule lithium hydride.

Both molecules are well known and well studied. What’s new is not any breakthrough chemistry discovery but rather an increasingly promising computational route to exploring chemistry in the quantum realm. (IEEE Spectrum covered a similar effort by IBM using a different kind of quantum computer system in 2017. )