REVIEW 2 major objections 9 minor 35 references
A single pretrained Slater-Koster model can supply the Hamiltonian for variational quantum band-structure calculations on any crystal built from 65 elements, removing per-material DFT, Wannierization, or hand-fitting.
Reviewed by Pith at T0; open to challenge. T0 means a machine referee read the full paper against a public rubric. the ladder, T0–T4 →
T0 review · grok-4.5
2026-07-14 16:16 UTC pith:DVCVTTLN
load-bearing objection Solid methods paper: universal SlaKoNet Hamiltonian into VQD recovers bands to ~1.8 meV of exact diagonalization of the same matrix, with honest hardware and DMFT extensions. the 2 major comments →
SlaKoNet-VQD: A universal Slater-Koster tight-binding Hamiltonian for variational quantum band-structure calculations on near-term hardware
The pith
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
Core claim
Coupling a universal, pretrained Slater-Koster tight-binding Hamiltonian generator to variational quantum deflation yields a structure-agnostic workflow that recovers full Brillouin-zone band structures for silicon and several superconductors to within about 1.8 meV of exact diagonalization of the same Hamiltonian on a few-qubit simulator, and that can be executed end-to-end on present quantum hardware for a representative ground-state point, without any per-material DFT, Wannierization, or empirical refitting.
What carries the argument
SlaKoNet: a neural parametrization of onsite energies and distance-dependent Slater-Koster hopping and overlap integrals across 65 elements; at runtime it builds H(k) and S(k) by polynomial interpolation, which is then Hermitized, Pauli-decomposed, and fed to a variational quantum deflation loop.
Load-bearing premise
The scientific usefulness of the whole pipeline rests on the claim that the pretrained tight-binding eigenvalues are faithful enough for screening, even though the model itself carries roughly three-quarters of an electron-volt mean absolute bandgap error versus experiment and lacks spin-orbit coupling.
What would settle it
Take a held-out crystal with Z at most 65, generate its SlaKoNet Hamiltonian, run the same VQD protocol along a standard high-symmetry path, and check whether mean absolute deviation from exact diagonalization of that Hamiltonian stays near 2 meV while the absolute bands still track a trusted TBmBJ or experimental reference within the model's stated bandgap error; a large VQD-versus-diagonalization gap or systematically wrong gap topology would falsify the central claim.
If this is right
- High-throughput benchmarking of variational quantum algorithms becomes possible across thousands of crystals without any Wannierization step per material.
- Because the map from atomic coordinates to H(k) is differentiable, ansatz parameters and crystal geometry can be co-optimized under a quantum-evaluated objective.
- The same neural Hamiltonian supplies a ready non-interacting bath for dynamical mean-field theory, making the impurity problem the natural target for a quantum solver without a per-material DFT front end.
- A fixed, reproducible Hamiltonian format across compositions becomes a clean benchmark substrate for new excited-state variational algorithms.
- Once fault-tolerant phase estimation is available for solids, the same universal generator can still supply the second-quantized input for any composition in the training domain.
Where Pith is reading between the lines
- If the neural integrals can later be extended to dynamical matrices, the identical VQD loop would yield phonon bands without finite-difference force constants per material.
- Hardware noise of several hundred meV currently swamps the meV-level simulator fidelity, so near-term value is more likely in algorithm and ansatz co-design than in production band maps.
- Restricting the DMFT bath to a low-energy manifold for cuprates already recovers strong renormalization; a full orbital-projected downfolding of the same neural Hamiltonian would be a direct next quantitative test.
- Compact log2(N) qubit encoding of the N-by-N matrix trades particle-number structure for qubit count; comparing it head-to-head with one-qubit-per-orbital encodings on the same SlaKoNet inputs would clarify which encoding scales first.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. The manuscript presents SlaKoNet-VQD, a pipeline that feeds a pretrained universal Slater-Koster tight-binding Hamiltonian (SlaKoNet, trained on JARVIS-TBmBJ across 65 elements) into a Qiskit VQD solver for periodic solids, replacing per-material DFT+Wannierization or hand-fitted TB parameters. On silicon, sequential VQD on a 3-qubit EfficientSU2 ansatz recovers all eight bands along the Setyawan-Curtarolo path with 1.78 meV MAE relative to exact diagonalization of the same SlaKoNet H(k); comparable MAE (≤1.8 meV) is reported for Al, Ta, Nb, V, and ZrN with no retraining. A single-k ground-state VQE on aluminum is executed on ibm_boston (~0.37 eV error after mitigation). The same H(k) is promoted to a Hubbard model and solved with DMFT(IPT), recovering qualitative correlation trends across group-5 metals and strong quasiparticle renormalization in La2CuO4 when the bath is restricted to the low-energy manifold. The authors argue the pipeline enables high-throughput VQA benchmarking and, in principle, gradient-based ansatz-Hamiltonian co-optimization.
Significance. The work cleanly removes a real bottleneck in near-term quantum band-structure studies: per-material Hamiltonian construction. The central numerical claim—VQD eigenvalues match exact diagonalization of the identical SlaKoNet matrix to ~1–2 meV across multiple chemistries and qubit counts—is independent, non-circular, and well documented (ansatz/optimizer ablations, Hermitization, full k-path). Code, model weights, a web app, and an archived IBM workload support reproducibility. The DMFT sketch usefully identifies the impurity problem as the natural quantum target once interactions are restored. Absolute electronic-structure accuracy remains bounded by SlaKoNet itself (0.74 eV bandgap MAE vs experiment), which the authors state explicitly; the contribution is therefore best read as a methods and infrastructure paper for VQA benchmarking and transferable TB inputs, not as a new high-accuracy electronic-structure method. Within that scope it is a solid and timely step.
major comments (2)
- Abstract and Sec. IVA claim the workflow is "suited to high-throughput bandstructure screening" while Sec. IVB correctly states that absolute accuracy is bounded by SlaKoNet’s 0.74 eV mean absolute bandgap error (and ~2.3 eV on ultrawide-gap insulators). High-throughput VQA benchmarking is well supported by the reported numbers; materials screening for quantitative band features is not, at that error level. Please align the abstract and opening claims with the more careful distinction already present in Sec. IVA–B (benchmarking vs screening), so the central utility claim matches the accuracy bound the paper itself reports.
- Sec. IIID places SlaKoNet "on the same footing as prior quantum band-structure work" via a DFT+Wannier comparison, but then notes that bases do not match and defers a fully basis-matched, element-wise comparison to future work. The only quantitative anchors given (valence bandwidth 11.3 vs 11.7 eV; deep s-band at Γ within ~0.4 eV) are coarse. Either (i) provide a basis-matched comparison for at least Si, or (ii) reframe this subsection as a qualitative consistency check and remove language that implies a rigorous baseline equivalence. As written, the subsection does not yet support the "same footing" claim.
minor comments (9)
- Introduction: "descrepancy" should be "discrepancy" (hardware-execution paragraph).
- Sec. IIG / Eq. (6): state explicitly how β_i = 4 was chosen and whether any k-points required retuning; a one-sentence robustness check (e.g., β in {2,4,8}) would strengthen the claim that eigenvalues are "empirically robust."
- Table I reports relative error as |E_VQE − E_exact|/|E_VQE|; the more conventional |E_VQE − E_exact|/|E_exact| would be clearer, and the absolute error in eV should be listed alongside.
- Fig. 3 and Fig. 7: marker size and color contrast make it hard to see residual deviations on the highest bands; consider a small residual panel or a supplementary table of per-band MAE.
- Sec. IIIG: IPT is controlled near half-filling; the group-5 metals are not half-filled d shells. A brief note that Z(U) trends are qualitative (as already hinted) and that a CTQMC or quantum-impurity reference would be needed for quantitative Z would help non-DMFT readers.
- Sec. IIIG, La2CuO4: the low-energy-manifold restriction is described as a "proxy" that overestimates Z relative to full downfolding. Please cite the orbital character used to define that manifold (energy window or projection) so the procedure is reproducible.
- Hardware (Sec. IIIE): report the exact ground-state energy of the same SlaKoNet H(k) used as reference for the 0.37 eV figure, and clarify whether the ~0.37 eV is raw or TREX-mitigated (text says "error-mitigated" but Fig. 6 caption emphasizes shot-noise bars).
- Eq. (7)–(8): the lattice Green’s function is written with a local Σ(ω); state whether orbital off-diagonal self-energy components are neglected and how multi-orbital U is treated for V/Nb/Ta (density-density only?).
- Data availability: the reproducibility repo is promised "upon publication"; if the journal allows, provide a temporary anonymous archive or DOI so reviewers can check the notebooks that generate Figs. 3–8.
Circularity Check
No significant circularity: VQD is validated against exact diagonalization of the same fixed SlaKoNet H(k), an independent classical check.
full rationale
The load-bearing numerical claim is that sequential VQD recovers the eigenvalues of the SlaKoNet-generated H(k) to ~1.78 meV MAE (Si, full path) and ≤1.8 meV (Al, Ta, Nb, V, ZrN) relative to exact diagonalization of that same matrix on a statevector simulator. That comparison is independent of how H(k) was trained: the matrix is fixed input, NumPy/exact diagonalization is an external classical oracle, and the reported MAE measures only variational solver fidelity. SlaKoNet itself is pretrained prior work (slakonet_v0 weights, no fine-tuning here) trained on JARVIS-TBmBJ DOS/bandgaps; the present paper does not re-fit SK parameters to the VQD eigenvalues or call that training a prediction of the VQD results. Hyperparameters (β_i=4, EfficientSU2 reps=5, COBYLA) are fixed and ablated across circuits/optimizers rather than fitted to the headline MAE. Hardware (single-k Al, ~0.37 eV) and DMFT/IPT sections are scoped as limited demonstrations and do not feed back into the band-structure MAE. Self-citations to SlaKoNet [19] and prior Wannier-VQE work [6] supply the Hamiltonian source and context; they do not force the VQD-vs-exact numbers by construction. Absolute electronic-structure accuracy is bounded by SlaKoNet’s own ~0.74 eV bandgap MAE (Sec. IVB), which the authors state explicitly and which is a correctness/scope limit, not circularity. No self-definitional loop, fitted-input-as-prediction, uniqueness theorem, or renamed empirical pattern is load-bearing for the strongest claim.
Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger
free parameters (4)
- VQD overlap penalty β_i =
4
- EfficientSU2 ansatz depth (reps) =
5
- COBYLA max iterations =
400
- Hubbard U values in DMFT =
2–6 eV (cRPA 3.2 eV)
axioms (4)
- domain assumption Slater-Koster two-center approximation plus polynomial interpolation of distance-tabulated integrals yields a faithful non-orthogonal TB Hamiltonian for the 65-element domain.
- domain assumption Sequential VQD with fixed overlap penalties recovers the ordered spectrum of an N×N Hermitian matrix when the ansatz is sufficiently expressive.
- ad hoc to paper Symmetric projection H ← (H+H†)/2 removes only numerical noise and does not alter the physical spectrum at the reported precision.
- domain assumption Classical IPT impurity solver at half-filling captures correlation trends (Z(U)) sufficiently for the qualitative DMFT claims.
read the original abstract
Variational quantum algorithms such as VQE and VQD are promising for near-term electronic structure calculations, but for periodic solids their reach is limited by the cost of building a faithful second-quantized Hamiltonian, typically via DFT plus Wannierization or hand-fit tight-binding parameters. SlaKoNet addresses this by combining deep learning with the Slater-Koster tight-binding formalism to fit hopping and overlap parameters across 65 elements, enabling deterministic Hamiltonian construction for any crystal built from these elements. Here we couple a SlaKoNet model trained on JARVIS-TBmBJ with a Qiskit-based VQD algorithm, replacing costly Hamiltonian construction with a universal neural Hamiltonian generator. The resulting SlaKoNet-VQD workflow is structure-agnostic, differentiable, and suited to high-throughput bandstructure screening. We benchmark on silicon, recovering the full eight-band structure along the standard k-path with mean absolute deviation of 1.78 meV from exact diagonalization on a 3-qubit simulator, and extend to five conventional superconductors (Al, Ta, Nb, V, ZrN) with similar accuracy. We demonstrate execution on IBM Quantum hardware for a k-point ground-state calculation on aluminum (MAE ~0.37 eV). We further promote the Hamiltonian to a correlated Hubbard model solved via dynamical mean-field theory, recovering weakening correlations across group-5 metals and strong quasiparticle renormalization in La2CuO4, identifying the impurity problem as a natural quantum solver target. This pipeline enables high-throughput VQA benchmarking across the periodic table and gradient-based ansatz-Hamiltonian co-optimization for materials discovery. Web app: https://atomgpt.org/quantum.
Figures
Reference graph
Works this paper leans on
-
[1]
Peruzzoet al.,A variational eigenvalue solver on a photonic quantum processor, Nat
A. Peruzzoet al.,A variational eigenvalue solver on a photonic quantum processor, Nat. Commun.5, 4213 (2014)
2014
-
[2]
Kandalaet al.,Hardware-efficient variational quan- tum eigensolver for small molecules and quantum mag- nets, Nature549, 242 (2017)
A. Kandalaet al.,Hardware-efficient variational quan- tum eigensolver for small molecules and quantum mag- nets, Nature549, 242 (2017)
2017
-
[3]
Higgott, D
O. Higgott, D. Wang, and S. Brierley,Variational quan- tum computation of excited states, Quantum3, 156 (2019)
2019
-
[4]
Caoet al.,Quantum chemistry in the age of quantum computing, Chem
Y. Caoet al.,Quantum chemistry in the age of quantum computing, Chem. Rev.119, 10856 (2019)
2019
-
[5]
McArdleet al.,Quantum computational chemistry, Rev
S. McArdleet al.,Quantum computational chemistry, Rev. Mod. Phys.92, 015003 (2020)
2020
-
[6]
Choudhary,Quantum computation for predicting elec- tron and phonon properties of solids, J
K. Choudhary,Quantum computation for predicting elec- tron and phonon properties of solids, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter33, 385501 (2021)
2021
-
[7]
Sherbert, F
K. Sherbert, F. T. Cerasoli, and M. Buongiorno Nardelli, A systematic variational approach to band theory in a quantum computer, RSC Adv.11, 39438 (2021)
2021
-
[8]
N. Khandelwal, N. Verma, P. Jamdagniet al.,Quantum computation of the electronic structure of some prototype solids, Sci. Rep.15, 44074 (2025); doi:10.1038/s41598- 025-27675-6
doi:10.1038/s41598- 2025
-
[9]
M. Ďuriška, I. Miháliková, and M. Friák,Quantum com- puting of the electronic structure of crystals by the vari- ational quantum deflation algorithm, Phys. Scr.100, 045111 (2025); doi:10.1088/1402-4896/adbb29
-
[10]
I. Miháliková, M. Krejčí, and M. Friák,The impact of quantum circuit architecture and hyperparameters on variational quantum algorithms exemplified in the elec- tronic structure of the GaAs crystal, Sci. Rep.15, 15746 (2025); doi:10.1038/s41598-025-00151-x
-
[11]
Marzari, A
N. Marzari, A. A. Mostofi, J. R. Yates, I. Souza, and D. Vanderbilt,Maximally localized Wannier functions: Theory and applications, Rev. Mod. Phys.84, 1419 (2012)
2012
-
[12]
Pizziet al.,Wannier90 as a community code: new features and applications, J
G. Pizziet al.,Wannier90 as a community code: new features and applications, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter32, 165902 (2020)
2020
-
[13]
Souza, N
I. Souza, N. Marzari, and D. Vanderbilt,Maximally local- ized Wannier functions for entangled energy bands, Phys. Rev. B65, 035109 (2001)
2001
-
[14]
J. C. Slater and G. F. Koster,Simplified LCAO method for the periodic potential problem, Phys. Rev.94, 1498 (1954)
1954
-
[15]
Porezag, T
D. Porezag, T. Frauenheim, T. Köhler, G. Seifert, and R. Kaschner,Construction of tight-binding-like potentials on the basis of density-functional theory: Application to carbon, Phys. Rev. B51, 12947 (1995)
1995
-
[16]
Liet al.,Deep-learning density functional theory Hamiltonian for efficient ab initio electronic-structure calculation, Nat
H. Liet al.,Deep-learning density functional theory Hamiltonian for efficient ab initio electronic-structure calculation, Nat. Comput. Sci.2, 367 (2022)
2022
-
[17]
Zhong, H
Y. Zhong, H. Yu, X. Gong, and H. Xiang,Transfer- able equivariant graph neural networks for the Hamilto- nians of molecules and solids, npj Comput. Mater.9, 182 (2023)
2023
-
[18]
O. T. Unkeet al.,SE(3)-equivariant prediction of molec- ular wavefunctions and electronic densities, Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst.34, 14434 (2021)
2021
-
[19]
K. Choudhary,SlaKoNet: A unified Slater-Koster tight- binding framework using neural network infrastructure for the periodic table, J. Phys. Chem. Lett.16, 11109 (2025); doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.5c02456
-
[20]
K. F. Garrity and K. Choudhary,Fast and accurate prediction of material properties with three-body tight- binding model for the periodic table, Phys. Rev. Mater. 7, 044603 (2023)
2023
-
[21]
Choudhary, Q
K. Choudhary, Q. Zhang, A. C. E. Reid, S. Chowd- hury, N. Van Nguyen, Z. Trautt, M. W. Newrock, F. Y. Congo, and F. Tavazza,Computational screen- ing of high-performance optoelectronic materials using OptB88vdW and TB-mBJ formalisms, Sci. Data5, 180082 (2018)
2018
-
[22]
Choudharyet al.,The joint automated repository for various integrated simulations (JARVIS) for data-driven materials design, npj Comput
K. Choudharyet al.,The joint automated repository for various integrated simulations (JARVIS) for data-driven materials design, npj Comput. Mater.6, 173 (2020)
2020
-
[23]
Setyawan and S
W. Setyawan and S. Curtarolo,High-throughput elec- tronic band structure calculations: Challenges and tools, 12 Comput. Mater. Sci.49, 299 (2010)
2010
-
[24]
M. J. D. Powell,A direct search optimization method that models the objective and constraint functions by linear in- terpolation, inAdvances in Optimization and Numerical Analysis(Springer, 1994), pp. 51-67
1994
-
[25]
K. M. Nakanishi, K. Mitarai, and K. Fujii,Subspace- search variational quantum eigensolver for excited states, Phys. Rev. Research1, 033062 (2019)
2019
-
[26]
M.Schuld, V.Bergholm, C.Gogolin, J.Izaac, andN.Kil- loran,Evaluating analytic gradients on quantum hard- ware, Phys. Rev. A99, 032331 (2019)
2019
-
[27]
A. Yu. Kitaev,Quantum measurements and the Abelian stabilizer problem, arXiv:quant-ph/9511026 (1995)
Pith/arXiv arXiv 1995
-
[28]
A. Javadi-Abhariet al.,Quantum comput- ing with Qiskit, arXiv:2405.08810 (2024); doi:10.48550/arXiv.2405.08810
-
[29]
IBM Quantum,https://quantum.ibm.com, accessed July 14, 2026
2026
-
[30]
Georges, G
A. Georges, G. Kotliar, W. Krauth, and M. J. Rozen- berg,Dynamical mean-field theory of strongly correlated fermion systems and the limit of infinite dimensions, Rev. Mod. Phys.68, 13 (1996)
1996
-
[31]
J. Selisko, M. Amsler, C. Wever, Y. Kawashima, G. Sam- sonidze, R. Ul Haq, F. Tacchino, I. Tavernelli, and T. Eckl,Dynamical mean field theory for real materi- als on a quantum computer, npj Comput. Mater.11, 325 (2025); doi:10.1038/s41524-025-01772-6
-
[32]
Bauer, D
B. Bauer, D. Wecker, A. J. Millis, M. B. Hastings, and M. Troyer,Hybrid quantum-classical approach to corre- lated materials, Phys. Rev. X6, 031045 (2016)
2016
-
[33]
J. M. Kreula, S. R. Clark, and D. Jaksch,Few-qubit quantum-classical simulation of strongly correlated lattice fermions, EPJ Quantum Technol.3, 11 (2016)
2016
-
[34]
I. Runggeret al.,Dynamical mean field theory algorithm and experiment on quantum computers, arXiv:1910.04735 (2019)
Pith/arXiv arXiv 1910
-
[35]
T. Keen, T. Maier, S. Johnston, and P. Lougov- ski,Quantum-classical simulation of two-site dynamical mean-field theory on noisy quantum hardware, Quantum Sci. Technol.5, 035001 (2020)
2020
discussion (0)
Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.