February 5, 2026
Journal Article

Quantum electrodynamics coupled-cluster at scale: High-performance implementation for complex systems

Abstract

Coupled cluster theory (CC) is a highly accurate and versatile method for simulating complex interactions within quantum systems. The extension of CC theory to model mixed electron-photon processes with quantum electrodynamics (QED) has improved our capability to predict cavity-modified chemistry, a field where photons are used as cost-effective and eco-friendly alternatives to catalyze/inhibit chemical reactions. However, calculations with CC methods, even without incorporating QED effects, are often prohibitively expensive. Simulations of larger systems require scalable infrastructures that exist for traditional CC methods but not for QED-CC methods. As such, we present a GPU-enabled, high-performance, open-source implementation of the quantum electrodynamics coupled-cluster method with single and double excitations (QED-CCSD) within the ExaChem quantum chemistry software package. ExaChem relies on the Tensor Algebra for Many-body Methods (TAMM) infrastructure: a parallel heterogeneous tensor library designed to achieve scalable performance on modern heterogeneous supercomputing platforms. We discuss theoretical foundations, algorithmic details, and numerical benchmarks to showcase the larger systems that ExaChem can simulate and how the integration of photonic degrees-of-freedom alters their ground-state properties.

Published: February 5, 2026

Citation

Bauman N.P., H. Pathak, M.D. Liebenthal, A.R. Panyala, D. Mejia Rodriguez, N. Govind, and K. Kowalski. 2025. Quantum electrodynamics coupled-cluster at scale: High-performance implementation for complex systems. Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation 22, no. 1:294-304. PNNL-SA-216841. doi:10.1021/acs.jctc.5c01599