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ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE)

Accelerating Stochastic Dynamics Simulation With Continuous-Time Quantum Walks

Yan Wang

Published Aug 21, 2016• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Stochastic diffusion is a general phenomenon observed in various national and engineering systems. It is typically modeled by either stochastic differential equation (SDE) or Fokker-Planck equation (FPE), which are equivalent approaches. Path integral is an accurate and effective method to solve FPEs. Yet, computational efficiency is the common challenge for path integral and other numerical methods, include time and space complexities. Previously, one-dimensional continuous-time quantum walk was used to simulate diffusion. By combining quantum diffusion and random diffusion, the new approach can accelerate the simulation with longer time steps than those in path integral. It was demonstrated that simulation can be dozens or even hundreds of times faster. In this paper, a new generic quantum operator is proposed to simulate drift-diffusion processes in high-dimensional space, which combines quantum walks on graphs with traditional path integral approaches. Probability amplitudes are computed efficiently by spectral analysis. The efficiency of the new method is demonstrated with stochastic resonance problems.

DOI
10.1115/detc2016-59420

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Stochastic diffusion is a general phenomenon observed in various national and engineering systems. It is typically modeled by either stochastic differential equation (SDE) or Fokker-Planck equation (FPE), which are equivalent approaches. Path integral is an accurate and effective method to solve FPEs. Yet, computational efficiency is the common challenge for path integral and other numerical methods, include time and space complexities. Previously, one-dimensional continuous-time quantum walk was used to simulate diffusion. By combining quantum diffusion and random diffusion, the new approach can accelerate the simulation with longer time steps than those in path integral. It was demonstrated that simulation can be dozens or even hundreds of times faster. In this paper, a new generic quantum operator is proposed to simulate drift-diffusion processes in high-dimensional space, which combines quantum walks on graphs with traditional path integral approaches. Probability amplitudes are computed efficiently by spectral analysis. The efficiency of the new method is demonstrated with stochastic resonance problems.
Stochastic differential equations (SDEs) model noisy dynamical systems across quantitative finance, chemistry, physics, and climate science. Classical solvers-Euler-Maruyama schemes, Monte Carlo methods, and finite-difference PDE solvers for Fokker-Planck equations-suffer from exponential growth in computational cost with dimension and accuracy requirements. We present a family of quantum algorithms for simulating and solving SDEs with improved scaling. Our approach combines Hamiltonian simulation for drift terms, quantum random number generation for noise increments, and quantum amplitude estimation for computing expectations. For linear and semilinear SDEs with Lipschitz coefficients, we prove that relevant quantities (option prices, expected hitting times, moments) can be estimated to accuracy ε in time Õ(poly(d)polylog(1/ε)), versus classical O(poly(d)/ε 2). For nonlinear SDEs, we introduce variational quantum schemes leveraging parameterized circuits, with a priori error bounds and trainability analysis avoiding barren plateaus. We analyze multi-asset Black-Scholes models, Heston stochastic volatility, and Langevin dynamics for molecular coarse-graining, quantifying resource requirements (qubits, gate depth, oracle calls). Numerical simulations on small instances demonstrate polynomial-to-super-polynomial empirical speedups in accuracy for fixed runtime, establishing SDE solving as a promising quantum-accelerated task with practical applications.
In this paper, we propose efficient quantum algorithms for solving nonlinear stochastic differential equations (SDE) via the associated Fokker-Planck equation (FPE). We discretize the FPE in space and time using two well-known numerical schemes, namely Chang-Cooper and implicit finite difference. We then compute the solution of the resulting system of linear equations using the quantum linear systems algorithm. We present detailed error and complexity analyses for both these schemes and demonstrate that our proposed algorithms, under certain conditions, provably compute the solution to the FPE within prescribedϵ\epsilonϵerror bounds with polynomial dependence on state dimensionddd. Classical numerical methods scale exponentially with dimension, thus, our approach, under the aforementioned conditions, provides an exponential speed-up over traditional approaches.
The Monte Carlo trajectory sampling of stochastic differential equations based on the quasiprobability distribution functions, such as the Glauber–Sudarshan P, Wigner, and Husimi Q functions, enables us to investigate bosonic open quantum many-body dynamics described by the Gorini–Kossakowski–Sudarshan–Lindblad (GKSL) equation. In this method, the Monte Carlo samplings for the initial distribution and stochastic noises incorporate quantum fluctuations, and thus, we can go beyond the mean-field approximation. However, description using stochastic differential equations is possible only when the corresponding Fokker–Planck equation has a positive-semidefinite diffusion matrix. In this work, we analytically derive the stochastic differential equations for arbitrary Hamiltonian and jump operators based on the path-integral formula, independently of the derivation of the Fokker–Planck equation. In the course of the derivation, we formulate the path-integral representation of the GKSL equation by using the -ordered quasiprobability distribution function, which systematically describes the aforementioned quasiprobability distribution functions by changing the real parameter . The essential point of this derivation is that we employ the Hubbard–Stratonovich transformation in the path integral, and its application is not always feasible. We find that the feasible condition of the Hubbard–Stratonovich transformation is identical to the positive-semidefiniteness condition of the diffusion matrix in the Fokker–Planck equation. In the benchmark calculations, we confirm that the Monte Carlo simulations of the obtained stochastic differential equations well reproduce the exact dynamics of physical quantities and non-equal time correlation functions of numerically solvable models, including the Bose–Hubbard model. This work clarifies the applicability of the approximation and gives systematic and simplified procedures to obtain the stochastic differential equations to be numerically solved.
Stochastic nonlinear dynamics underlie many models in engineering and computational physics, yet accurate high-dimensional simulation remains challenging. We present a quantum algorithm for a broad class of NNN-dimensional stochastic differential equations with dissipation and quadratic drift. The algorithm applies to strongly nonlinear systems with all-to-all interactions, thereby extending the scope of previously known quantum algorithms that were limited to weak nonlinearity and sparse systems. For norm-preserving drifts, a condition satisfied by key fluid dynamics discretizations, our method approximates expectation values of low-order correlation functions with rigorous error bounds at a cost polynomial in log⁡(N)\log{(N)}log(N) and linear in the evolution time. Our main technical advance is a subroutine for simulating an auxiliary system of NNN interacting quantum harmonic oscillators with cost polylogarithmic in NNN. Finally, we formulate turbulence models, including Navier-Stokes and damped Euler equations, within this framework, opening a route to quantum simulation of strongly nonlinear SDEs governing turbulence and nonlinear wave dynamics.
Stochastic differential equations (SDEs), which model uncertain phenomena as the time evolution of random variables, are exploited in various fields of natural and social sciences such as finance. Since SDEs rarely admit analytical solutions and must usually be solved numerically with huge classical-computational resources in practical applications, there is strong motivation to use quantum computation to accelerate the calculation. Here, we propose a quantum-classical hybrid algorithm that solves SDEs based on variational quantum simulation. We first approximate the target SDE by a trinomial tree structure with discretization and then formulate it as the time-evolution of a quantum state embedding the probability distributions of the SDE variables. We embed the probability distribution directly in the amplitudes of the quantum state whereas the previous studies took the square-root of the probability distribution in the amplitudes. Our embedding enables us to construct simple quantum circuits that simulate the time-evolution of the state for general SDEs. We also develop a scheme to compute the expectation values of the SDE variables and discuss whether our scheme can achieve quantum speedup for the expectation-value evaluations of the SDE variables. Finally, we numerically validate our algorithm by simulating several types of stochastic processes. Our proposal provides a new direction for simulating SDEs on quantum computers.
Nonlinear stochastic differential equations (NSDEs) are a pillar of mathematical modeling for scientific and engineering applications. Accurate and efficient simulation of large-scale NSDEs is prohibitive on classical computers due to the large number of degrees of freedom, and it is challenging on quantum computers due to the linear and unitary nature of quantum mechanics. We develop a quantum algorithm to tackle nonlinear differential equations driven by the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) stochastic process. The query complexity of our algorithm scales logarithmically with the error tolerance and nearly quadratically with the simulation time. Our algorithmic framework comprises probabilistic Carleman linearization (PCL) to tackle nonlinearity coupled with stochasticity, and stochastic linear combination of Hamiltonian simulations (SLCHS) to simulate stochastic non-unitary dynamics. We obtain probabilistic exponential convergence for the Carleman linearization of Liu et al. [1], provided the NSDE is stable and reaches a steady state. We extend deterministic LCHS to stochastic linear differential equations, retaining near-optimal parameter scaling from An et al. [2] except for the nearly quadratic time scaling. This is achieved by using Monte Carlo integration for time discretization of both the stochastic inhomogeneous term in LCHS and the truncated Dyson series for each Hamiltonian simulation.