Block encoding lies at the core of many existing quantum algorithms. Meanwhile, efficient and explicit block encodings of dense operators are commonly acknowledged as a challenging problem. This paper presents a comprehensive study of the block encoding of a rich family of dense operators: the pseudo-differential operators (PDOs). First, a block encoding scheme for generic PDOs is developed. Then we propose a more efficient scheme for PDOs with a separable structure. Finally, we demonstrate an explicit and efficient block encoding algorithm for PDOs with a dimension-wise fully separable structure. Complexity analysis is provided for all block encoding algorithms presented. The application of theoretical results is illustrated with worked examples, including the representation of variable coefficient elliptic operators and the computation of the inverse of elliptic operators without invoking quantum linear system algorithms (QLSAs).
Block encoding lies at the core of many existing quantum algorithms. Meanwhile, efficient and explicit block encodings of dense operators are commonly acknowledged as a challenging problem. This paper presents a comprehensive study of the block encoding of a rich family of dense operators: the pseudo-differential operators (PDOs). First, a block encoding scheme for generic PDOs is developed. Then we propose a more efficient scheme for PDOs with a separable structure. Finally, we demonstrate an explicit and efficient block encoding algorithm for PDOs with a dimension-wise fully separable structure. Complexity analysis is provided for all block encoding algorithms presented. The application of theoretical results is illustrated with worked examples, including the representation of variable coefficient elliptic operators and the computation of the inverse of elliptic operators without invoking quantum linear system algorithms (QLSAs).
Simulation of physical systems is one of the most promising use cases of future digital quantum computers. In this work we systematically analyze the quantum circuit complexities of block encoding the discretized elliptic operators that arise extensively in numerical simulations for partial differential equations, including high-dimensional instances for many-body simulations. When restricted to rectangular domains with separable boundary conditions, we provide explicit circuits to block encode the many-body Laplacian with separable periodic, Dirichlet, Neumann, and Robin boundary conditions, using standard discretization techniques from low-order finite difference methods. To obtain high-precision, we introduce a scheme based on periodic extensions to solve Dirichlet and Neumann boundary value problems using a high-order finite difference method, with only a constant increase in total circuit depth and subnormalization factor. We then present a scheme to implement block encodings of differential operators acting on more arbitrary domains, inspired by Cartesian immersed boundary methods. We then block encode the many-body convective operator, which describes interacting particles experiencing a force generated by a pair-wise potential given as an inverse power law of the interparticle distance. This work provides concrete recipes that are readily translated into quantum circuits, with depth logarithmic in the total Hilbert space dimension, that block encode operators arising broadly in applications involving the quantum simulation of quantum and classical many-body mechanics.
While quantum algorithms for solving large scale systems of linear equations offer potentially exponential speedups, their application has largely been confined to sparse matrices. This work extends the scope of these algorithms to a broad class of structured dense matrices arise in potential theory, covariance modeling, and computational physics, namely, hierarchically block separable (HBS) matrices. We develop two distinct methods to make these systems amenable to quantum solvers. The first is a pre-processing approach that transforms the dense matrix into a larger but sparse format. The second is a direct block encoding scheme that recursively constructs the necessary oracles from the HBS structure. We provide a detailed complexity analysis and rigorous error bounds for both methods. Numerical experiments are presented to validate the effectiveness of our approaches.
The data input model is a fundamental component of every quantum algorithm, as its efficiency is crucial for achieving potential speed-ups over classical methods. For quantum linear algebra tasks that utilize quantum eigenvalue or singular value transformations, block encoding is the established technique for accessing matrix data. A key application of this is solving partial differential equations, where the Laplacian operator and its finite difference discretization serve as foundational examples. In this article, we present an efficient and explicit block encoding method for the Laplacian with periodic boundary conditions that enhances existing approaches in key aspects. We detail the construction of the quantum algorithm and illustrate how it leverages the unique structure of finite difference discretizations. Furthermore, we analytically derive the scaling of the sub-normalization factor and of the success probability of the block encoding with respect to the problem dimension, the grid width of the finite difference grid and the regularity of the exact solution, and we give resource estimates.
Discrete Laplacian operators arise ubiquitously in scientific computing and frequently appear in quantum algorithms for tasks such as linear algebra, Hamiltonian simulation, and partial differential equations. Block encoding provides the standard method for accessing matrix data within quantum circuits. Efficient implementations of such algorithms require efficient block encodings of the discretized operator. While several general-purpose techniques exist for block encoding arbitrary matrices, they usually require deep quantum circuits. Moreover, existing efficient constructions that exploit Laplacian structure are limited in scope, typically assuming fixed boundary conditions or uniform grid resolutions. In this work, we present a unified framework for efficiently block encoding finite-difference discretizations of the Laplacian that supports Dirichlet, periodic, and Neumann boundary conditions in arbitrary spatial dimensions. Our construction allows different boundary conditions and grid sizes to be specified independently along each coordinate axis, enabling mixed-boundary and anisotropic discretizations within a single modular circuit architecture. We provide analytical gate-complexity estimates and perform circuit-level benchmarks after transpilation to an IBM hardware gate set. Across one-, two-, and three-dimensional examples, the resulting circuits exhibit substantially lower gate counts and higher success probabilities when compared to certain existing approaches.
In numerical approaches to solving differential equations on a lattice, a representation of the derivative operator that correctly matches the continuum behaviour of functions of momentum up to the band limit must be non-local. We present the construction of efficient linear-combination-of-unitaries (LCU)-based block-encodings for the first-order derivative and Laplacian operators in the non-local N=2n-dimensional SLAC representation. We use state-preparation techniques designed for smoothly decaying functions to prepare the dense LCU amplitudes with high success probability and low gate cost. Furthermore, we demonstrate how Shannon wavelet transforms can be applied to these block-encodings to obtain multiscale representations of the SLAC derivative operators. We then show how to apply a diagonal preconditioner that reduces the condition number of these matrices in the multiscale wavelet basis to a small constant. This enables the solution of partial differential equations (PDEs) with SLAC-discretised derivative operators on a finite lattice using the quantum linear solving algorithm (QLSA). For a d-dimensional PDE, after projection away from the nullspace, the resulting quantum linear-system algorithm has overall gate complexity O(dn3α(k)log(1/ε)), where α(k) is the subnormalisation factor of the order-k SLAC block-encoding and ε denotes the algorithmic approximation error.
One of the most promising applications of quantum computers is solving partial differential equations (PDEs). By using the Schrödingerization technique—which converts nonconservative PDEs into Schrödinger equations—the problem can be reduced to Hamiltonian simulations. The particular class of Hamiltonians we consider is shown to be sufficient for simulating almost any linear PDE. In particular, these Hamiltonians consist of discretizations of polynomial products and sums of position and momentum operators. This paper addresses an important gap by efficiently loading these Hamiltonians into the quantum computer through block-encoding. The construction is explicit and efficient in terms of one- and two-qubit operations, forming a fundamental building block for constructing the unitary evolution operator for that class of Hamiltonians. The proposed algorithm demonstrates a squared logarithmic scaling with respect to the spatial partitioning size, offering a polynomial speedup over classical finite-difference methods in the context of spatial partitioning for solving PDEs. Furthermore, the algorithm is extended to the multidimensional case, achieving an exponential acceleration with respect to the number of dimensions, alleviating the curse of dimensionality problem. This work provides an essential foundation for developing explicit and efficient quantum circuits for PDEs, Hamiltonian simulations, and ground state and thermal state preparation.