Quantum computers have the potential to revolutionize quantum chemistry because they can, in
principle, compute accurate electronic structure models very efficiently. At the moment, however, we
are technologically limited to so-called ‘noisy intermediate-scaling quantum' (NISQ) devices, which
suffer from calculation errors (noise) because they are very sensitive to their environment. Despite
these noise issues, accurate molecular energies can be obtained on NISQ devices, but unfortunately
only when the underlying wave function is variationally forced to overcorrect for the computational
errors made by the quantum computer.

In this project, we will show that relying on such error corrections negatively impacts the quality of
the wave function and causes unreliable performance for general chemical applications. By analyzing
how quantum computing wave functions describe the atoms in the molecule, we will uncover their
chemical content and will determine if they erroneously predict molecules to dissociate into
fractionally charged atoms. Moreover, we will demonstrate that atoms as conceptual open quantum
systems offer the ideal tools to solve quantum computational errors in an innovative way without
compromising on quality. In this way, we intend to create the first 'killer quantum computing app'
that allows researchers to fully apply the power of quantum computing to their research without
sacrificing the chemical concepts they hold dear.