Quantum annealing for systems of polynomial equations

Numerous scientific and engineering applications require numerically solving systems of equations. Classically solving a general set of polynomial equations requires iterative solvers, while linear equations may be solved either by direct matrix inversion or iteratively with judicious preconditioning. However, the convergence of iterative algorithms is highly variable and depends, in part, on the condition number. We present a direct method for solving general systems of polynomial equations based on quantum annealing, and we validate this method using a system of second-order polynomial equations solved on a commercially available quantum annealer. We then demonstrate applications for linear regression, and discuss in more detail the scaling behavior for general systems of linear equations with respect to problem size, condition number, and search precision. Finally, we define an iterative annealing process and demonstrate its efficacy in solving a linear system to a tolerance of $10^{-8}$.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures. Added example for a system of quadratic equations. Supporting code is available at https://github.com/cchang5/quantum_poly_solver . This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Scientific Reports. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-46729-

Quantum Computing for Fusion Energy Science Applications

This is a review of recent research exploring and extending present-day quantum computing capabilities for fusion energy science applications. We begin with a brief tutorial on both ideal and open quantum dynamics, universal quantum computation, and quantum algorithms. Then, we explore the topic of using quantum computers to simulate both linear and nonlinear dynamics in greater detail. Because quantum computers can only efficiently perform linear operations on the quantum state, it is challenging to perform nonlinear operations that are generically required to describe the nonlinear differential equations of interest. In this work, we extend previous results on embedding nonlinear systems within linear systems by explicitly deriving the connection between the Koopman evolution operator, the Perron-Frobenius evolution operator, and the Koopman-von Neumann evolution (KvN) operator. We also explicitly derive the connection between the Koopman and Carleman approaches to embedding. Extension of the KvN framework to the complex-analytic setting relevant to Carleman embedding, and the proof that different choices of complex analytic reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces depend on the choice of Hilbert space metric are covered in the appendices. Finally, we conclude with a review of recent quantum hardware implementations of algorithms on present-day quantum hardware platforms that may one day be accelerated through Hamiltonian simulation. We discuss the simulation of toy models of wave-particle interactions through the simulation of quantum maps and of wave-wave interactions important in nonlinear plasma dynamics.Comment: 42 pages; 12 figures; invited paper at the 2021-2022 International Sherwood Fusion Theory Conferenc

New Developments in Quantum Algorithms

In this survey, we describe two recent developments in quantum algorithms. The first new development is a quantum algorithm for evaluating a Boolean formula consisting of AND and OR gates of size N in time O(\sqrt{N}). This provides quantum speedups for any problem that can be expressed via Boolean formulas. This result can be also extended to span problems, a generalization of Boolean formulas. This provides an optimal quantum algorithm for any Boolean function in the black-box query model. The second new development is a quantum algorithm for solving systems of linear equations. In contrast with traditional algorithms that run in time O(N^{2.37...}) where N is the size of the system, the quantum algorithm runs in time O(\log^c N). It outputs a quantum state describing the solution of the system.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, to appear as an invited survey talk at MFCS'201

Simple digital quantum algorithm for symmetric first order linear hyperbolic systems

This paper is devoted to the derivation of a digital quantum algorithm for the Cauchy problem for symmetric first order linear hyperbolic systems, thanks to the reservoir technique. The reservoir technique is a method designed to avoid artificial diffusion generated by first order finite volume methods approximating hyperbolic systems of conservation laws. For some class of hyperbolic systems, namely those with constant matrices in several dimensions, we show that the combination of i) the reservoir method and ii) the alternate direction iteration operator splitting approximation, allows for the derivation of algorithms only based on simple unitary transformations, thus perfectly suitable for an implementation on a quantum computer. The same approach can also be adapted to scalar one-dimensional systems with non-constant velocity by combining with a non-uniform mesh. The asymptotic computational complexity for the time evolution is determined and it is demonstrated that the quantum algorithm is more efficient than the classical version. However, in the quantum case, the solution is encoded in probability amplitudes of the quantum register. As a consequence, as with other similar quantum algorithms, a post-processing mechanism has to be used to obtain general properties of the solution because a direct reading cannot be performed as efficiently as the time evolution.Comment: 28 pages, 12 figures, major rewriting of the section describing the numerical method, simplified the presentation and notation, reorganized the sections, comments are welcome