We propose a Hybrid Quantum-Classical Physics-Informed Neural Network (HQC-PINN) that integrates parameterized variational quantum circuits into the PINN framework for hydrological PDE-constrained learning. Our architecture encodes multi-source remote sensing features into quantum states via trainable angle encoding, processes them through a hardware-efficient variational ansatz with entangling layers, and constrains the output using the Saint-Venant shallow water equations and Manning's flow equation as differentiable physics loss terms. The inherent stochasticity of quantum measurement provides a natural mechanism for uncertainty quantification without requiring explicit Bayesian inference machinery. We further introduce a quantum transfer learning protocol that pre-trains on multi-hazard disaster data before fine-tuning on flood-specific events. Numerical simulations on multi-modal satellite and meteorological data from the Kalu River basin, Sri Lanka, show that the HQC-PINN achieves convergence in ~3x fewer training epochs and uses ~44% fewer trainable parameters compared to an equivalent classical PINN, while maintaining competitive classification accuracy. Theoretical analysis indicates that hydrological physics constraints narrow the effective optimization landscape, providing a natural mitigation against barren plateaus in variational quantum circuits. This work establishes the first application of quantum-enhanced physics-informed learning to hydrological prediction and demonstrates a viable path toward quantum advantage in environmental science.
Comments
25 pages, 6 tables. Code available at https://github.com/nimanpra/HQC-PINN-Flood-Prediction. v2: corrected reference attributions in Section II.B
We propose a Hybrid Quantum-Classical Physics-Informed Neural Network (HQC-PINN) that integrates parameterized variational quantum circuits into the PINN framework for hydrological PDE-constrained learning. Our architecture encodes multi-source remote sensing features into quantum states via trainable angle encoding, processes them through a hardware-efficient variational ansatz with entangling layers, and constrains the output using the Saint-Venant shallow water equations and Manning's flow equation as differentiable physics loss terms. The inherent stochasticity of quantum measurement provides a natural mechanism for uncertainty quantification without requiring explicit Bayesian inference machinery. We further introduce a quantum transfer learning protocol that pre-trains on multi-hazard disaster data before fine-tuning on flood-specific events. Numerical simulations on multi-modal satellite and meteorological data from the Kalu River basin, Sri Lanka, show that the HQC-PINN achieves convergence in ~3x fewer training epochs and uses ~44% fewer trainable parameters compared to an equivalent classical PINN, while maintaining competitive classification accuracy. Theoretical analysis indicates that hydrological physics constraints narrow the effective optimization landscape, providing a natural mitigation against barren plateaus in variational quantum circuits. This work establishes the first application of quantum-enhanced physics-informed learning to hydrological prediction and demonstrates a viable path toward quantum advantage in environmental science.
Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) have emerged as a versatile approach for solving nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs), yet achieving high accuracy efficiently using these techniques remains challenging for high-dimensional or multiscale systems. Here, we present a hybrid quantum-classical framework that enhances Quantum PINNs (QPINNs) through adaptive collocation point sampling and loss-aware attention mechanisms. By dynamically prioritizing points in regions with large PDE residuals or steep solution gradients, our method mitigates the spectral bias inherent in conventional PINNs. Current Quantum Physics-Informed Neural Networks are commonly assumed to be limited by the expressive power of quantum circuits. In our work, we observed that, across diverse differential equations, optimization - not only expressivity - can be an important bottleneck. Furthermore, a trainable loss-weighting scheme balances contributions from physics residuals, boundary conditions, and data fidelity during training. Integrating these strategies with quantum computing techniques (including variational quantum circuits and quantum gradient estimation) can yield at least a 60% improvement in solution accuracy under specific regimes for benchmark fluid flows and reaction-diffusion systems. Finally, we argue that merely increasing model expressivity is insufficient for resolving complex PDEs via QPINNs, as they remain constrained by the structural optimization limitations of classical PINNs. This framework provides a scalable pathway for quantum-enhanced scientific machine learning, bridging physics-based modeling with emerging quantum computational capabilities.
The steady incompressible Navier--Stokes equations pose significant computational challenges due to their nonlinear convective terms and pressure--velocity coupling. Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) provide a mesh-free framework for approximating such systems, but classical PINNs can experience optimization difficulties in nonlinear flow regimes. In this work, we propose a quantum physics-informed neural network (QPINN) framework with a quantum neural network (QNN)-based trainable embedding for the lid-driven cavity problem. The proposed approach uses a QNN to learn data-adaptive quantum feature maps that encode spatial coordinates before they are processed by a variational quantum circuit within a physics-informed loss formulation. Numerical experiments show that the proposed QNN-TE-QPINN exhibits stable training behavior and competitive solution accuracy compared with classical PINNs and hybrid quantum models using classical embeddings, while requiring significantly fewer trainable parameters. Rather than claiming computational speedup, these results highlight the potential of trainable quantum embeddings for parameter-efficient physics-informed learning. The findings suggest that embedding design plays an important role in quantum-assisted PDE solvers and support further investigation of QNN-based trainable embeddings for nonlinear fluid dynamics benchmarks.
Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) have emerged as a powerful framework for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) by embedding governing physical laws directly into the training objective. Recent advances in quantum machine learning have motivated hybrid quantum-classical extensions aimed at enhancing representational capacity while remaining compatible with near-term quantum hardware. In this work, we investigate trainable embedding strategies within quantum-assisted PINNs for solving parabolic PDEs, using one- and two-dimensional heat equations as canonical benchmarks. We introduce two quantum-assisted architectures that differ in their embedding components. In the first approach, a classical feed-forward neural network generates trainable feature maps for quantum data encoding (FNN-TE-QPINN). In the second, the embedding stage is realized entirely by a parameterized quantum circuit (QNN-TE-QPINN), yielding a fully quantum feature map. Our findings emphasize the critical role of embedding design and support hybrid quantum-classical approaches for parabolic PDE modeling in the NISQ era.
This study introduces a quantum-accelerated framework that integrates quantum optimization with physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) to solve PDEs more efficiently. By leveraging the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA), the proposed framework enhances the initialization and boundary parameter optimization of PINNs, addressing key challenges such as slow convergence and high computational cost. The hybrid approach combines the data efficiency and physical constraint embedding capabilities of PINNs with the computational advantages of quantum optimization, enabling faster and more accurate solutions for complex PDEs. The framework was validated using the Shuhao Cao PDE dataset, demonstrating significant improvements in training efficiency and accuracy compared to traditional numerical solvers and classical PINNs. Experimental results highlight that quantum optimization effectively accelerates convergence by optimizing initial conditions and boundary constraints, reducing the computational overhead associated with classical training processes. Despite its reliance on emerging quantum hardware and the sensitivity of PINNs to hyperparameter selection, this approach offers a scalable and robust solution for solving high-dimensional PDEs. The findings underscore the potential of hybrid quantum-classical methods in advancing scientific computing, providing a foundation for future research in stochastic PDEs, multi-physics problems, and other real-world applications.
Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) and hybrid quantum-classical extensions provide a promising framework for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) by embedding physical laws directly into the learning process. In this work, we study embedding strategies for trainable embedding quantum physics-informed neural networks (TE-QPINNs) in the context of nonlinear reaction-diffusion (RD) systems. We introduce an extended TE-QPINN (x-TE-QPINN) architecture that supports both classical and fully quantum embeddings, enabling a controlled comparison between feedforward neural network-based feature maps and parameterized quantum circuit embeddings. The first architecture is the classical embedding feed-forward neural network-based TE-QPINN (FNN-TE-QPINN), while the latter variant is a purely quantum one, referred to as quantum embedding neural network-based TE-QPINN (QNN-TE-QPINN). The proposed framework employs hardware-efficient variational quantum circuits and species-specific readout operators to approximate coupled multi-field dynamics while enforcing governing equations, boundary conditions, and initial conditions through a physics-informed loss function. By isolating the embedding mechanism while keeping the variational ansatz, loss formulation, and optimization procedure fixed, we analyze the impact of embedding design on gradient structure, parameter scaling, and quantum resource requirements. Numerical experiments on one- and two-dimensional RD equations demonstrate that quantum embeddings can replace classical embeddings without degradation in solution accuracy and, in certain regimes, exhibit improved optimization behavior compared to classical PINNs and hybrid quantum models with fixed embeddings. These results provide architectural insight into hybrid quantum PDE solvers and inform the design of resource-efficient quantum physics-informed learning methods.
Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) embed the governing differential equation in their loss function, but often require thousands of trainable parameters. We introduce a Quantum-enhanced PINN (QPINN) in which a single classical hidden layer is replaced by a four-qubit Variational Quantum Circuit (VQC). Two one-dimensional wave-propagation problems validate the approach. In a Hardy-constrained wave-equation test, the QPINN achieved lower error rates while using 71% fewer parameters than the classical PINN. A second experiment with Gaussian-pulse excitation showed similar results: the hybrid model obtained improved accuracy with approximately 70% parameter reduction. These results demonstrate the viability of quantum layers as feature extractors in PINN architectures.