The solution of large systems of nonlinear differential equations is essential for many applications in science and engineering. We present three improvements to existing quantum algorithms based on the Carleman linearisation technique. First, we use a high-precision method for solving the linearised system that yields logarithmic dependence on the error and near-linear dependence on time. Second, we introduce a rescaling strategy that significantly reduces the cost, which would otherwise scale exponentially with the Carleman order, thus limiting quantum speedups for PDEs. Third, we derive tighter error bounds for Carleman linearisation. We apply our results to a class of discretised reaction-diffusion equations using higher-order finite differences for spatial resolution. We also show that enforcing a stability criterion independent of the discretisation can conflict with rescaling due to the mismatch between the max-norm and the 2-norm. Nonetheless, efficient quantum solutions remain possible when the number of discretisation points is constrained, as enabled by higher-order schemes.
The solution of large systems of nonlinear differential equations is essential for many applications in science and engineering. We present three improvements to existing quantum algorithms based on the Carleman linearisation technique. First, we use a high-precision method for solving the linearised system that yields logarithmic dependence on the error and near-linear dependence on time. Second, we introduce a rescaling strategy that significantly reduces the cost, which would otherwise scale exponentially with the Carleman order, thus limiting quantum speedups for PDEs. Third, we derive tighter error bounds for Carleman linearisation. We apply our results to a class of discretised reaction-diffusion equations using higher-order finite differences for spatial resolution. We also show that enforcing a stability criterion independent of the discretisation can conflict with rescaling due to the mismatch between the max-norm and the 2-norm. Nonetheless, efficient quantum solutions remain possible when the number of discretisation points is constrained, as enabled by higher-order schemes.
We present substantially generalized and improved quantum algorithms over prior work for inhomogeneous linear and nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODE). Specifically, we show how the norm of the matrix exponential characterizes the run time of quantum algorithms for linear ODEs opening the door to an application to a wider class of linear and nonlinear ODEs. In \cite{BCOW17}, a quantum algorithm for a certain class of linear ODEs is given, where the matrix involved needs to be diagonalizable. The quantum algorithm for linear ODEs presented here extends to many classes of non-diagonalizable matrices including singular matrices. The algorithm here is also exponentially faster than the bounds derived in \cite{BCOW17} for certain classes of diagonalizable matrices. Our linear ODE algorithm is then applied to nonlinear differential equations using Carleman linearization (an approach taken recently by us in \cite{Liue2026805118}). The improvement over that result is two-fold. First, we obtain an exponentially better dependence on error. This kind of logarithmic dependence on error has also been achieved by \cite{Xue_2021}, but only for homogeneous nonlinear equations. Second, the present algorithm can handle any sparse matrix (that models dissipation) if it has a negative log-norm (including non-diagonalizable matrices), whereas \cite{Liue2026805118} and \cite{Xue_2021} additionally require normality.
We develop a pivot-shifted Carleman linearization framework for quantum algorithms solving quadratic nonlinear ordinary differential equations. By shifting the dynamics by a pivot state prior to Carleman lifting, and combining this with a Lyapunov transform and rescaling, we enlarge the class of nonlinear systems that can be efficiently simulated on quantum computers. For systems that exhibit stability in the shifted coordinates, we establish long time convergence of the truncated Carleman embedding. We prove that the truncation order scales only logarithmically with the simulation time and target precision, and we derive end-to-end quantum query complexity bounds for preparing a state proportional to the final solution. By introducing a modified nonlinearity condition, this framework entirely removes the conventional lower bound requirement on the initial condition. For more general systems that remain unstable after shifting, we provide short time convergence guarantees that are similarly free from the initial condition constraints. Numerical experiments on the logistic and the Lotka-Volterra equations demonstrate that an appropriate pivot choice improves stability and accuracy, and yields exponential error decay with truncation order. These results show that pivot shifting provides a practical and theoretically justified route for extending Carleman-based quantum algorithms to a broader class of nonlinear dynamical systems.
Important nonlinear dynamics, such as those found in plasma and fluid systems, are typically hard to simulate on classical computers. Thus, if fault-tolerant quantum computers could efficiently solve such nonlinear problems, it would be a transformative change for many industries. In a recent breakthrough [Liu et al., PNAS 2021], the first efficient quantum algorithm for solving nonlinear differential equations was constructed, based on a single condition R<1, where R characterizes the ratio of nonlinearity to dissipation. This result, however, is limited to the class of purely dissipative systems with negative log-norm, which excludes application to many important problems. In this work, we correct technical issues with this and other prior analysis, and substantially extend the scope of nonlinear dynamical systems that can be efficiently simulated on a quantum computer in a number of ways. Firstly, we extend the existing results from purely dissipative systems to a much broader class of stable systems, and show that every quadratic Lyapunov function for the linearized system corresponds to an independent R-number criterion for the convergence of the Carleman scheme. Secondly, we extend our stable system results to physically relevant settings where conserved polynomial quantities exist. Finally, we provide extensive results for the class of non-resonant systems. With this, we are able to show that efficient quantum algorithms exist for a much wider class of nonlinear systems than previously known, and prove the BQP-completeness of nonlinear oscillator problems of exponential size. In our analysis, we also obtain several results related to the Poincaré-Dulac theorem and diagonalization of the Carleman matrix, which could be of independent interest.
Nonlinear differential equations exhibit rich phenomena in many fields but are notoriously challenging to solve. Recently, Liu et al. [1] demonstrated the first efficient quantum algorithm for dissipative quadratic differential equations under the condition R<1, where R measures the ratio of nonlinearity to dissipation using the ℓ2 norm. Here we develop an efficient quantum algorithm based on [1] for reaction-diffusion equations, a class of nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs). To achieve this, we improve upon the Carleman linearization approach introduced in [1] to obtain a faster convergence rate under the condition RD<1, where RD measures the ratio of nonlinearity to dissipation using the ℓ∞ norm. Since RD is independent of the number of spatial grid points n while R increases with n, the criterion RD<1 is significantly milder than R<1 for high-dimensional systems and can stay convergent under grid refinement for approximating PDEs. As applications of our quantum algorithm we consider the Fisher-KPP and Allen-Cahn equations, which have interpretations in classical physics. In particular, we show how to estimate the mean square kinetic energy in the solution by postprocessing the quantum state that encodes it to extract derivative information.
Quantum algorithms offer an exponential advantage with respect to the number of dependent variables for solving certain nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs). These algorithms typically begin by transforming the original nonlinear ODE into a higher-dimensional linear ODE using a linearization technique, most commonly Carleman linearization. Existing works restrict their analysis to ODEs where the nonlinearities are polynomial functions of the dependent variables, significantly limiting their applicability. In this work we construct an efficient quantum algorithm for solving ODEs with `Fourier' nonlinear terms expressible as du/dt=G0+G1eiu, where u denotes a vector of n complex variables evolving with t, G0 is an n-dimensional complex vector, G1 is an n×n complex matrix and eiu denotes the vector with entries {eiuj}. To tackle the Fourier nonlinear term, which is not expressible as a finite sum of polynomials of u, our algorithm employs a generalization of the Carleman linearization technique known as Koopman linearization. We also make other methodological advances towards relaxing the stringent dissipativity condition required for efficient solution extraction and towards integrated readout of classical quantities from the solution state. Our results open avenues to the development of efficient quantum algorithms for a significantly wider class of high-dimensional nonlinear ODEs, thereby broadening the scope of their applications.
We present two new quantum algorithms for reaction-diffusion equations that employ the truncated Chebyshev polynomial approximation. This method is employed to numerically solve the ordinary differential equation emerging from the linearization of the associated nonlinear differential equation. In the first algorithm, we use the matrix exponentiation method (Patel et al., 2018), while in the second algorithm, we repurpose the quantum spectral method (Childs et al., 2020). Our main technical contribution is to derive the sufficient conditions for the diagonalization of the Carleman embedding matrix, which is indispensable for designing both quantum algorithms. We supplement this with an efficient iterative algorithm to diagonalize the Carleman matrix. Our first algorithm has gate complexity of O(d⋅log(d)+T⋅polylog(T/ε)). Here d is the size of the Carleman matrix, T is the simulation time, and ε is the approximation error. The second algorithm is polynomial in log(d), T, and log(1/ε) - the gate complexity scales as O(polylog(d)⋅T⋅polylog(T/ε)). In terms of T and ε, this is comparable to the speedup gained by the current best known quantum algorithm for this problem, the truncated Taylor series method (Costa et.al., 2025). Our approach has two shortcomings. First, we have not provided an upper bound, in terms of d, on the condition number of the Carleman matrix. Second, the success of the diagonalization is based on a conjecture that a specific trigonometric equation has no integral solution. However, we provide strategies to mitigate these shortcomings in most practical cases.