Postdoc position in Montpellier

POSTDOC POSITION IN MONTPELLIER. Density Functional Theory on Quantum Computers

A postdoc position is available for 18 months, starting from October 1st 2022 (or no later than January 2023) at the Charles Gerhardt Institute of Montpellier (France), in the new department "Chimie Physique Théorique et Modélisation" (before called "Chimie Théorique, Méthodologies, Modélisations").
The project (acronym QUALITY: QUantum ALgorithms for densIty funcTional theorY) is supervised by Dr. Bruno Senjean (ICGM Montpellier) and co-supervised by Pr. David Guéry-Odelin (LCAR Toulouse).

The technological revolution brought about by quantum computers promises to solve problems with high economic and societal impacts that remain intractable on classical computers.
While several quantum algorithms have been devoted to solving the many-body problem in quantum chemistry, the focus is on wave function theory that is limited to relatively small systems, even for quantum computers, i.e., the size of tractable systems being roughly limited by the number of qubits available.
Computations on large systems rely mainly on mean-field-type approaches such as density functional theory (DFT), for which a possible quantum advantage was envisioned recently [1].

This project consists of the implementation of DFT (and its lattice version, the so-called Site-Occupation Functional Theory) on qubit-based and qudit-based quantum devices. After performing noiseless and noisy simulations on classical computers (using Qiskit), the candidate will interact with the cold atom team led by the co-supervisor (David Guéry-Odelin) for the implementation of the qudit protocol on the Toulouse quantum platform [2].

The postdoc candidate should not have more than 2 years of experience after the end of his/her PhD.
Programming (python) and method development skills are required, as well as knowledge in Quantum Computing and method development in chemistry.

Applications should be sent to Bruno Senjean (bruno.senjean@umontpellier.fr) including:
- a Complete Scientific CV (with list of publications)
- 1 or 2 reference letters (to be sent directly to bruno.senjean@umontpellier.fr by the person that recommends the candidate)

The deadline for submitting an application is the end of July 2022.

Bruno Senjean and David Guéry-Odelin.

[1] B. Senjean, S. Yalouz, M. Saubanère, arxiv:2204.01443
[2] N. Dupont, G. Chatelain, L. Gabardos, M. Arnal, J. Billy, B. Peaudecerf, D. Sugny, D. Guéry-Odelin, PRX Quantum 2, 040303 (2021)