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arXiv:2603.19130 · Numerical Algorithms

Quantum block encoding for semiseparable matrices

Giacomo Antonioli, Paola Boito, Gianna M. Del Corso, Margherita Porcelli

quant-phmath.NAmath.QASubmitted Mar 19, 2026• Announced Mar 20, 2026• 0 citations
v1 · Mar 19, 2026v2 · Jun 29, 2026
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Abstract

Quantum block encoding (QBE) is a crucial step in the development of most quantum algorithms, as it provides an embedding of a given matrix into a suitable larger unitary matrix. Historically, the development of efficient techniques for QBE has mostly focused on sparse matrices; less effort has been devoted to data-sparse (e.g., rank-structured) matrices. In this work we examine a particular case of rank structure, namely, one-pair semiseparable matrices. We present a new block encoding approach that relies on a suitable factorization of the given matrix as the product of triangular and diagonal factors. To encode the matrix, the algorithm needs $2\log(N)+7$ ancillary qubits. This process takes polylogarithmic time and has an error of $\mathcal{O}(N^2)$, where $N$ is the matrix size.

Journal reference
Numerical Algorithms, 2026
DOI
10.1007/s11075-026-02479-5

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Quantum block encoding (QBE) is a crucial step in the development of most quantum algorithms, as it provides an embedding of a given matrix into a suitable larger unitary matrix. Historically, the development of efficient techniques for QBE has mostly focused on sparse matrices; less effort has been devoted to data-sparse (e.g., rank-structured) matrices.
In this work we examine a particular case of rank structure, namely, one-pair semiseparable matrices. We present a new block encoding approach that relies on a suitable factorization of the given matrix as the product of triangular and diagonal factors. To encode the matrix, the algorithm needs 2log⁡(N)+72\log(N)+72log(N)+7 ancillary qubits. This process takes polylogarithmic time and has an error of O(N2)\mathcal{O}(N^2)O(N2), where NNN is the matrix size.
We present an explicit quantum circuit that constructs a block encoding of a generator-representable semiseparable (one-pair) matrix directly from its two generators. For an N×NN\times NN×N semiseparable matrix with N=2nN=2^{n}N=2n, the circuit uses 2n+22n+22n+2 ancilla qubits and has O(polylogN)O({\rm polylog} N)O(polylogN) depth, and it realizes a (2N, 2n+2, 22 ε)(2\sqrt{N},\,2n+2,\,2 \sqrt{2}\ \varepsilon)(2N​,2n+2,22​ ε)-block encoding, where ε\varepsilonε is controlled by the accuracy of the state-preparation routines that load the generators. The building blocks of the circuit are cyclic shifts, swaps, and Hadamard gates, each admitting an efficient implementation through the binary decomposition of the relevant indices.
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.
Abstract. Many standard linear algebra problems can be solved on a quantum computer by using recently developed quantum linear algebra algorithms that make use of block encodings and quantum eigenvalue/singular value transformations. A block encoding embeds a properly scaled matrix of interest [Formula: see text] in a larger unitary transformation [Formula: see text] that can be decomposed into a product of simpler unitaries and implemented efficiently on a quantum computer. Although quantum algorithms can potentially achieve exponential speedup in solving linear algebra problems compared to the best classical algorithm, such a gain in efficiency ultimately hinges on our ability to construct an efficient quantum circuit for the block encoding of [Formula: see text], which is difficult in general, and not trivial even for well structured sparse matrices. In this paper, we give a few examples on how efficient quantum circuits can be explicitly constructed for some well structured sparse matrices and discuss a few strategies used in these constructions. We also provide implementations of these quantum circuits in MATLAB.
Block encoding is a successful technique used in several powerful quantum algorithms. In this work we provide an explicit quantum circuit for block encoding a sparse matrix with a periodic diagonal structure. The proposed methodology is based on the linear combination of unitaries (LCU) framework and on an efficient unitary operator used to project the complex exponential at a frequency ωωω multiplied by the computational basis into its real and imaginary components. We demonstrate a distinct computational advantage with a O(poly(n))\mathcal{O}(\text{poly}(n))O(poly(n)) gate complexity, where nnn is the number of qubits, in the worst-case scenario used for banded matrices, and O(n)\mathcal{O}(n)O(n) when dealing with a simple diagonal matrix, compared to the exponential scaling of general-purpose methods for dense matrices. Various applications for the presented methodology are discussed in the context of solving differential problems such as the advection-diffusion-reaction (ADR) dynamics, using quantum algorithms with optimal scaling, e.g., quantum singular value transformation (QSVT). Numerical results are used to validate the analytical formulation.
Quantum Signal Processing (QSP) and Quantum Singular Value Transformation (QSVT) provide an efficient framework for implementing polynomials of block-encoded matrices, and thus offer a systematic approach to quantum algorithm design. However, despite a number of recent advances, important limitations remain. In particular, QSP can only transform unitary matrices, by applying a polynomial to their eigenvalues, while QSVT is a singular-value transformation and thus one can only obtain the polynomial of Hermitian matrices. As a consequence, these techniques do not directly apply to an arbitrary non-Hermitian matrix that is not diagonalizable. In this work, we propose a simple yet powerful method to extend these ideas to arbitrary square matrices by acting on their eigenvalues. To this end, we introduce the notion of an nnn-regular block encoding, namely, a block encoding whose kkk-th power reproduces the kkk-th power of the encoded matrix for every 0<k<n0 < k < n0<k<n. We show that applying QSP to any unitary with this property is equivalent to applying a polynomial of degree at most nnn to the block-encoded matrix, independently of its internal structure. Moreover, we provide a simple construction that transforms any block encoding into an nnn-regular one using only O(log⁡n)O(\log n)O(logn) ancillary qubits and operations. Finally, we show that this construction induces the desired transformation on the eigenvalues associated with the Jordan normal form of the matrix; for non-diagonalizable matrices this yields the full matrix function P(A)P(A)P(A), whose action on each Jordan block involves the derivatives of PPP, and not merely the map λ↦P(λ)λ\mapsto P(λ)λ↦P(λ).
Block encoding severs as an important data input model in quantum algorithms, enabling quantum computers to simulate non-unitary operators effectively. In this paper, we propose an efficient block-encoding protocol for sparse matrices based on a novel data structure, called the dictionary data structure, which classifies all non-zero elements according to their values and indices. Non-zero elements with the same values, lacking common column and row indices, belong to the same classification in our block-encoding protocol's dictionary. When compiled into the {U(2), CNOT} gate set, the protocol queries a 2n×2n sparse matrix with s non-zero elements at a circuit depth of O(log⁡(ns)) , utilizing O(n2s) ancillary qubits. This offers an exponential improvement in circuit depth relative to the number of system qubits, compared to existing methods \cite{clader2022quantum,zhang2024circuit} with a circuit depth of O(n) . Moreover, in our protocol, the subnormalization, a scaled factor that influences the measurement probability of ancillary qubits, is minimized to ∑l=0s0|Al| , where s0 denotes the number of classifications in the dictionary and Al represents the value of the l -th classification. Furthermore, we show that our protocol connects to linear combinations of unitaries (LCU) and the sparse access input model (SAIM) . To demonstrate the practical utility of our approach, we provide several applications, including Laplacian matrices in graph problems and discrete differential operators.