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In the realm of computational science and engineering, constructing models that reflect real-world phenomena requires solving partial differential equations (PDEs) with different conditions. Recent advancements in neural operators, such as deep operator network (DeepONet), which learn mappings between infinite-dimensional function spaces, promise efficient computation of PDE solutions for a new condition in a single forward pass. However, classical DeepONet entails quadratic complexity concerning input dimensions during evaluation. Given the progress in quantum algorithms and hardware, here we propose to utilize quantum computing to accelerate DeepONet evaluations, yielding complexity that is linear in input dimensions. Our proposed quantum DeepONet integrates unary encoding and orthogonal quantum layers. We benchmark our quantum DeepONet using a variety of PDEs, including the antiderivative operator, advection equation, and Burgers' equation. We demonstrate the method's efficacy in both ideal and noisy conditions. Furthermore, we show that our quantum DeepONet can also be informed by physics, minimizing its reliance on extensive data collection. Quantum DeepONet will be particularly advantageous in applications in outer loop problems which require exploring parameter space and solving the corresponding PDEs, such as uncertainty quantification and optimal experimental design.
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This content will become publicly available on March 1, 2026
Solving Multidimensional Partial Differential Equations Using Efficient Quantum Circuits
Quantum computing has the potential to solve certain compute-intensive problems faster than classical computing by leveraging the quantum mechanical properties of superposition and entanglement. This capability can be particularly useful for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs), which are challenging to solve even for High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems, especially for multidimensional PDEs. This led researchers to investigate the usage of Quantum-Centric High-Performance Computing (QC-HPC) to solve multidimensional PDEs for various applications. However, the current quantum computing-based PDE-solvers, especially those based on Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs) suffer from limitations, such as low accuracy, long execution times, and limited scalability. In this work, we propose an innovative algorithm to solve multidimensional PDEs with two variants. The first variant uses Finite Difference Method (FDM), Classical-to-Quantum (C2Q) encoding, and numerical instantiation, whereas the second variant utilizes FDM, C2Q encoding, and Column-by-Column Decomposition (CCD). We evaluated the proposed algorithm using the Poisson equation as a case study and validated it through experiments conducted on noise-free and noisy simulators, as well as hardware emulators and real quantum hardware from IBM. Our results show higher accuracy, improved scalability, and faster execution times in comparison to variational-based PDE-solvers, demonstrating the advantage of our approach for solving multidimensional PDEs.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1942973
- PAR ID:
- 10600283
- Publisher / Repository:
- MDPI
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Algorithms
- Volume:
- 18
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 1999-4893
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 176
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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