Design nearly optimal quantum algorithm for linear differential equations via Lindbladians

Zhong-Xia Shang, Naixu Guo, Dong An, Qi Zhao

Published 2024-10-25Version 1

Solving linear ordinary differential equations (ODE) is one of the most promising applications for quantum computers to demonstrate exponential advantages. The challenge of designing a quantum ODE algorithm is how to embed non-unitary dynamics into intrinsically unitary quantum circuits. In this work, we propose a new quantum algorithm for ODEs by harnessing open quantum systems. Specifically, we utilize the natural non-unitary dynamics of Lindbladians with the aid of a new technique called the non-diagonal density matrix encoding to encode general linear ODEs into non-diagonal blocks of density matrices. This framework enables us to design a quantum algorithm that has both theoretical simplicity and good performance. Combined with the state-of-the-art quantum Lindbladian simulation algorithms, our algorithm, under a plausible input model, can outperform all existing quantum ODE algorithms and achieve near-optimal dependence on all parameters. We also give applications of our algorithm including the Gibbs state preparations and the partition function estimations.