We propose a hybrid classical-quantum digitized counterdiabatic algorithm to tackle the protein-folding problem on a tetrahedral lattice. Digitized counterdiabatic quantum computing is a paradigm developed to compress quantum algorithms via the digitization of the counterdiabatic acceleration of a given adiabatic quantum computation. Finding the lowest-energy configuration of the amino-acid sequence is an NP-hard optimization problem that plays a prominent role in chemistry, biology, and drug design. We outperform state-of-the-art quantum algorithms using problem-inspired and hardware-efficient variational quantum circuits. We apply our method to proteins with up to nine amino acids, using up to 17 qubits on quantum hardware. Specifically, we benchmark our quantum algorithm with Quantinuum’s trapped ions, and Google’s and IBM’s superconducting circuits, obtaining high success probabilities with low-depth circuits as required in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era.

• Received 6 March 2023
• Revised 12 May 2023
• Accepted 25 May 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.20.014024