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arXiv:2609.14077

IQFEM: A quantum finite element method for heterogeneous problems with immersed boundaries

Shehara Perera, Yiren Wang, Fehmi Cirak

Published Sep 12, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Quantum computing offers the potential to solve computational mechanics problems with a more favourable complexity scaling than classically possible. To realise this potential, a quantum-compatible formulation of the finite element method is essential. We present such a formulation for Poisson problems with spatially varying coefficients on general domains discretised by an immersed uniform Cartesian grid. The resulting banded sparse system matrices are encoded as the sum of diagonal matrices with polynomial entries and their products with shift matrices. The sum of the matrices is formed using the linear combination of unitaries (LCU) technique. The resulting block-encoded system matrix can be implemented using a polylogarithmic number of elementary gates. For immersed boundaries, the block-encoded system matrix is further processed using a diagonal indicator matrix with zeros and ones. The indicator matrix is defined in terms of an integer-valued level-set function composed of simple geometric primitives via Boolean set operations. The required integer operations are computed on the fly using quantum arithmetic. The resulting block-encoded linear system of equations is solved using quantum singular value transformation (QSVT). The overall gate count, including the QSVT, is $O(N_{\text{tot}}^{2/d} \operatorname{polylog}(N_{\text{tot}}))$, where $d$ is the problem dimension and $N_{\text{tot}}$ the number of grid points. In numerical examples that confirm the theoretical complexity estimates, the solutions converge approximately linearly for immersed problems and quadratically for simply connected domains.

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Quantum computing offers the potential to solve computational mechanics problems with a more favourable complexity scaling than classically possible. To realise this potential, a quantum-compatible formulation of the finite element method is essential. We present such a formulation for Poisson problems with spatially varying coefficients on general domains discretised by an immersed uniform Cartesian grid. The resulting banded sparse system matrices are encoded as the sum of diagonal matrices with polynomial entries and their products with shift matrices. The sum of the matrices is formed using the linear combination of unitaries (LCU) technique. The resulting block-encoded system matrix can be implemented using a polylogarithmic number of elementary gates. For immersed boundaries, the block-encoded system matrix is further processed using a diagonal indicator matrix with zeros and ones. The indicator matrix is defined in terms of an integer-valued level-set function composed of simple geometric primitives via Boolean set operations. The required integer operations are computed on the fly using quantum arithmetic. The resulting block-encoded linear system of equations is solved using quantum singular value transformation (QSVT). The overall gate count, including the QSVT, is O(Ntot2/dpolylog⁡(Ntot))O(N_{\text{tot}}^{2/d} \operatorname{polylog}(N_{\text{tot}}))O(Ntot2/d​polylog(Ntot​)), where ddd is the problem dimension and NtotN_{\text{tot}}Ntot​ the number of grid points. In numerical examples that confirm the theoretical complexity estimates, the solutions converge approximately linearly for immersed problems and quadratically for simply connected domains.
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