The Poisson equation occurs in many areas of science and engineering. Here we
focus on its numerical solution for an equation in d dimensions. In particular
we present a quantum algorithm and a scalable quantum circuit design which
approximates the solution of the Poisson equation on a grid with error
\varepsilon. We assume we are given a supersposition of function evaluations of
the right hand side of the Poisson equation. The algorithm produces a quantum
state encoding the solution. The number of quantum operations and the number of
qubits used by the circuit is almost linear in d and polylog in
\varepsilon^{-1}. We present quantum circuit modules together with performance
guarantees which can be also used for other problems.Comment: 30 pages, 9 figures. This is the revised version for publication in
New Journal of Physic
