Faster quantum linear system solver beyond the condition number

Abstract

The spectral condition number is a widely adopted measure of worst-case cost for quantum linear system solvers. Yet it can significantly overestimate the actual runtime for a typical problem instance. We present two quantum algorithms that produce the normalized solution $|x\rangle$ of linear system $Ax=| b \rangle$ to accuracy $ε$ with complexity independent of the condition number $κ=\lVert A^{-1}\rVert$. We focus on the standard input model where $A$ is accessed through a block encoding and $| b \rangle$ is prepared by a unitary. But we also introduce an affine dilation model that encodes $A$ and $| b \rangle$ jointly, allowing further refinements of the query complexity. Our truncation-based solver makes an optimal number of queries to $| b \rangle$ and $\operatorname{\mathbf{O}}\left(κ_{\mathrm{eff}}\operatorname{polylog}\left(\frac{κ_{\mathrm{eff}}}ε\right)\right)$ queries to $A$. We prove a family of upper bounds on the effective condition number, including $κ_{\mathrm{eff}}\leq\frac{\lVert(A^\dagger A)^{-t/2}|x\rangle\rVert^{1/t}}{ε^{1/t}}$ for positive even integer $t$ and $κ_{\mathrm{eff}}\leq\frac{\lVert A^{-1\dagger}(A^\dagger A)^{-(t-1)/2}|x\rangle\rVert^{1/t}}{ε^{1/t}}$ for positive odd $t$, overcoming the $κ$-barrier. Our filtering-based solver is extremely simple with a favorable runtime prefactor. In particular, the solver has query complexity $3\frac{\lVert A^{-1\dagger}|x\rangle\rVert}ε$ to leading order when the solution norm is known. We then present a similarly simple solution norm estimator with the same asymptotic cost up to logarithmic factors. Our quantum linear system solvers thus substantially improve a recent algorithm of Li, enabling faster quantum linear system solving beyond the condition number.