Digitized Counterdiabatic Quantum Algorithm for Protein Folding

We propose a hybrid classical-quantum digitized-counterdiabatic algorithm to tackle the protein folding problem on tetrahedral lattice. Digitized-counterdiabatic quantum computing is paradigm developed compress algorithms via digitization of counterdiabatic acceleration given adiabatic computation. Finding lowest energy configuration amino acid sequence an NP-hard optimization that plays prominent role in chemistry, biology, and drug design. outperform state-of-the-art using problem-inspired hardware-efficient variational circuits. apply our method proteins with up 9 acids, 17 qubits hardware. Specifically, we benchmark Quantinuum's trapped ions, Google's IBM's superconducting circuits, obtaining high success probabilities low-depth circuits as required NISQ era.