No Arabic abstract
We establish an improved classical algorithm for solving linear systems in a model analogous to the QRAM that is used by quantum linear solvers. Precisely, for the linear system $Ax = b$, we show that there is a classical algorithm that outputs a data structure for $x$ allowing sampling and querying to the entries, where $x$ is such that $|x - A^{-1}b|leq epsilon |A^{-1}b|$. This output can be viewed as a classical analogue to the output of quantum linear solvers. The complexity of our algorithm is $widetilde{O}(kappa_F^6 kappa^2/epsilon^2 )$, where $kappa_F = |A|_F|A^{-1}|$ and $kappa = |A||A^{-1}|$. This improves the previous best algorithm [Gily{e}n, Song and Tang, arXiv:2009.07268] of complexity $widetilde{O}(kappa_F^6 kappa^6/epsilon^4)$. Our algorithm is based on the randomized Kaczmarz method, which is a particular case of stochastic gradient descent. We also find that when $A$ is row sparse, this method already returns an approximate solution $x$ in time $widetilde{O}(kappa_F^2)$, while the best quantum algorithm known returns $ket{x}$ in time $widetilde{O}(kappa_F)$ when $A$ is stored in the QRAM data structure. As a result, assuming access to QRAM and if $A$ is row sparse, the speedup based on current quantum algorithms is quadratic.
Solving linear systems of equations is essential for many problems in science and technology, including problems in machine learning. Existing quantum algorithms have demonstrated the potential for large speedups, but the required quantum resources are not immediately available on near-term quantum devices. In this work, we study near-term quantum algorithms for linear systems of equations of the form $Ax = b$. We investigate the use of variational algorithms and analyze their optimization landscapes. There exist types of linear systems for which variational algorithms designed to avoid barren plateaus, such as properly-initialized imaginary time evolution and adiabatic-inspired optimization, suffer from a different plateau problem. To circumvent this issue, we design near-term algorithms based on a core idea: the classical combination of variational quantum states (CQS). We exhibit several provable guarantees for these algorithms, supported by the representation of the linear system on a so-called Ansatz tree. The CQS approach and the Ansatz tree also admit the systematic application of heuristic approaches, including a gradient-based search. We have conducted numerical experiments solving linear systems as large as $2^{300} times 2^{300}$ by considering cases where we can simulate the quantum algorithm efficiently on a classical computer. These experiments demonstrate the algorithms ability to scale to system sizes within reach in near-term quantum devices of about $100$-$300$ qubits.
We present classical sublinear-time algorithms for solving low-rank linear systems of equations. Our algorithms are inspired by the HHL quantum algorithm for solving linear systems and the recent breakthrough by Tang of dequantizing the quantum algorithm for recommendation systems. Let $A in mathbb{C}^{m times n}$ be a rank-$k$ matrix, and $b in mathbb{C}^m$ be a vector. We present two algorithms: a sampling algorithm that provides a sample from $A^{-1}b$ and a query algorithm that outputs an estimate of an entry of $A^{-1}b$, where $A^{-1}$ denotes the Moore-Penrose pseudo-inverse. Both of our algorithms have query and time complexity $O(mathrm{poly}(k, kappa, |A|_F, 1/epsilon),mathrm{polylog}(m, n))$, where $kappa$ is the condition number of $A$ and $epsilon$ is the precision parameter. Note that the algorithms we consider are sublinear time, so they cannot write and read the whole matrix or vectors. In this paper, we assume that $A$ and $b$ come with well-known low-overhead data structures such that entries of $A$ and $b$ can be sampled according to some natural probability distributions. Alternatively, when $A$ is positive semidefinite, our algorithms can be adapted so that the sampling assumption on $b$ is not required.
Polynomial eigenvalue problems (PEPs) arise in a variety of science and engineering applications, and many breakthroughs in the development of classical algorithms to solve PEPs have been made in the past decades. Here we attempt to solve PEPs in a quantum computer. Firstly, for generalized eigenvalue problems (GEPs) $Ax = lambda Bx$ with $A,B$ symmetric, and $B$ positive definite, we give a quantum algorithm based on block-encoding and quantum phase estimation. In a more general case when $B$ is invertible, $B^{-1}A$ is diagonalizable and all the eigenvalues are real, we propose a quantum algorithm based on the Fourier spectral method to solve ordinary differential equations (ODEs). The inputs of our algorithms can be any desired states, and the outputs are superpositions of the eigenpairs. The complexities are polylog in the matrix size and linear in the precision. The dependence on precision is optimal. Secondly, we show that when $B$ is singular, any quantum algorithm uses at least $Omega(sqrt{n})$ queries to compute the eigenvalues, where $n$ is the matrix size. Thirdly, based on the linearization method and the connection between PEPs and higher-order ODEs, we provide two quantum algorithms to solve PEPs by extending the quantum algorithm for GEPs. We also give detailed complexity analysis of the algorithm for two special types of quadratic eigenvalue problems that are important in practice. Finally, under an extra assumption, we propose a quantum algorithm to solve PEPs when the eigenvalues are complex.
Quantum computers can produce a quantum encoding of the solution of a system of differential equations exponentially faster than a classical algorithm can produce an explicit description. However, while high-precision quantum algorithms for linear ordinary differential equations are well established, the best previous quantum algorithms for linear partial differential equations (PDEs) have complexity $mathrm{poly}(1/epsilon)$, where $epsilon$ is the error tolerance. By developing quantum algorithms based on adaptive-order finite difference methods and spectral methods, we improve the complexity of quantum algorithms for linear PDEs to be $mathrm{poly}(d, log(1/epsilon))$, where $d$ is the spatial dimension. Our algorithms apply high-precision quantum linear system algorithms to systems whose condition numbers and approximation errors we bound. We develop a finite difference algorithm for the Poisson equation and a spectral algorithm for more general second-order elliptic equations.
Quantum adiabatic algorithm is of vital importance in quantum computation field. It offers us an alternative approach to manipulate the system instead of quantum gate model. Recently, an interesting work arXiv:1805.10549 indicated that we can solve linear equation system via algorithm inspired by adiabatic quantum computing. Here we demonstrate the algorithm and realize the solution of 8-dimensional linear equations $Atextbf{x}=textbf{b}$ in a 4-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance system. The result is by far the solution of maximum-dimensional linear equation with a limited number of qubits in experiments, which includes some ingenious simplifications. Our experiment provides the new possibility of solving so many practical problems related to linear equations systems and has the potential applications in designing the future quantum algorithms.