  The ability to perform classically intractable electronic structure
calculations is often cited as one of the principal applications of quantum
computing. A great deal of theoretical algorithmic development has been
performed in support of this goal. Most techniques require a scheme for mapping
electronic states and operations to states of and operations upon qubits. The
two most commonly used techniques for this are the Jordan-Wigner transformation
and the Bravyi-Kitaev transformation. However, comparisons of these schemes
have previously been limited to individual small molecules. In this paper we
discuss resource implications for the use of the Bravyi-Kitaev mapping scheme,
specifically with regard to the number of quantum gates required for
simulation. We consider both small systems which may be simulatable on
near-future quantum devices, and systems sufficiently large for classical
simulation to be intractable. We use 86 molecular systems to demonstrate that
the use of the Bravyi-Kitaev transformation is typically at least approximately
as efficient as the canonical Jordan-Wigner transformation, and results in
substantially reduced gate count estimates when performing limited circuit
optimisations.
