Abstract Quantum circuits with trainable parameters, paired with classical optimization routines can be used as machine learning models. The recently popularized physics-informed neural network (PINN) approach is a machine learning algorithm that solves differential equations by incorporating them into a loss function. Being a mesh-free method, it is a promising approach for computational fluid dynamics. The question arises whether the properties of quantum circuits can be leveraged for a quantum physics-informed machine learning model. In this study, we compare the classical PINN-ansatz and its quantum analog, which we name the physics-informed quantum circuit (PIQC). The PIQC simulations are performed on a noise-free quantum computing simulator. Studying various differential equations, we compare expressivity, accuracy and convergence properties. We find that one-dimensional problems, such as the linear transport of a Gaussian-pulse or Burgers’ equation, allow a successful approximation with the classical and the quantum ansatz. For these examples, the PIQC overall performs similarly to PINN and converges more consistently and for Burgers’ equations even faster. While this is promising, the chosen quantum circuit approach struggles to approximate discontinuous solutions which the classical PINN-ansatz can represent. Based on this comparison, we extrapolate that the required number of qubits for solving two-dimensional problems in aerodynamics may already be available in the next few years. However, the acceleration potential is currently unclear and challenges like noisy circuits and approximations of discontinuous solutions have to be overcome.
Abstract Quantum circuits with trainable parameters, paired with classical optimization routines can be used as machine learning models. The recently popularized physics-informed neural network (PINN) approach is a machine learning algorithm that solves differential equations by incorporating them into a loss function. Being a mesh-free method, it is a promising approach for computational fluid dynamics. The question arises whether the properties of quantum circuits can be leveraged for a quantum physics-informed machine learning model. In this study, we compare the classical PINN-ansatz and its quantum analog, which we name the physics-informed quantum circuit (PIQC). The PIQC simulations are performed on a noise-free quantum computing simulator. Studying various differential equations, we compare expressivity, accuracy and convergence properties. We find that one-dimensional problems, such as the linear transport of a Gaussian-pulse or Burgers’ equation, allow a successful approximation with the classical and the quantum ansatz. For these examples, the PIQC overall performs similarly to PINN and converges more consistently and for Burgers’ equations even faster. While this is promising, the chosen quantum circuit approach struggles to approximate discontinuous solutions which the classical PINN-ansatz can represent. Based on this comparison, we extrapolate that the required number of qubits for solving two-dimensional problems in aerodynamics may already be available in the next few years. However, the acceleration potential is currently unclear and challenges like noisy circuits and approximations of discontinuous solutions have to be overcome.
Abstract Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) have emerged as promising methods for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) by embedding physical laws within neural architectures. However, these classical approaches often require a large number of parameters to achieve reasonable accuracy, particularly for complex PDEs. In this paper, we present a quantum-classical PINNs (QCPINNs) that combines quantum and classical components, allowing us to solve PDEs with significantly fewer parameters while maintaining comparable accuracy and convergence to classical PINNs. We systematically evaluated two quantum circuit architectures across various configurations on five benchmark PDEs to identify optimal QCPINN designs. Our results demonstrate that the QCPINN achieves stable convergence and comparable accuracy, while using only 10%–30% of the trainable parameters required by classical PINNs. This approach also results in a significant reduction in the relative L 2 error for Helmholtz, Klein–Gordon, and Convection–diffusion equations, with reduction ranging from 4% to 64% across various fields. These findings demonstrate the potential of parameter efficiency and solution accuracy in physics-informed machine learning, allowing for a substantial decrease in model complexity without compromising solution quality.
Recently, physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) have aroused an upsurge in the field of scientific computing including solving partial differential equations (PDEs), which convert the task of solving PDEs into an optimization challenge by adopting governing equations and definite conditions or observation data as loss functions. Essentially, the underlying logic of PINNs is based on the universal approximation and differentiability properties of classical neural networks (NNs). Recent research has revealed that quantum neural networks (QNNs), known as parameterized quantum circuits, also exhibit universal approximation and differentiability properties. This observation naturally suggests the application of PINNs to QNNs. In this work, we introduce a physics-informed quantum neural network (PI-QNN) by employing the QNN as the function approximator for solving forward and inverse problems of PDEs. The performance of the proposed PI-QNN is evaluated by various forward and inverse PDE problems. Numerical results indicate that PI-QNN demonstrates superior convergence over PINN when solving PDEs with exact solutions that are strongly correlated with trigonometric functions. Moreover, its accuracy surpasses that of PINN by two to three orders of magnitude, while requiring fewer trainable parameters. However, the computational time of PI-QNN exceeds that of PINN due to its operation on classical computers. This limitation may improve with the advent of commercial quantum computers in the future. Furthermore, we briefly investigate the impact of network architecture on PI-QNN performance by examining two different QNN architectures. The results suggest that increasing the number of trainable network layers can enhance the expressiveness of PI-QNN. However, an excessive number of data encoding layers significantly increases computational time, rendering the marginal gains in performance insufficient to compensate for the shortcomings in computational efficiency.
Abstract Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) have emerged as a promising approach for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) by embedding the governing physics into the loss function associated with a deep neural network. In this work, a Quantum Physics-Informed Neural Network (QPINN) framework is proposed to solve two-dimensional (2D) time-dependent Maxwell’s equations. Our approach utilizes a parametrized quantum circuit (PQC) in conjunction with the classical neural network architecture and enforces physical laws, including a global energy conservation principle, during training. A quantum simulation library, TorQ - Tensor Operations for Research in Quantum systems , was developed to efficiently compute circuit outputs and derivatives by leveraging GPU acceleration based on PyTorch, enabling end-to-end training of the QPINN. The method was evaluated on two 2D electromagnetic wave propagation problems: one in free space (vacuum) and the other has an added dielectric medium. Multiple quantum circuit ansätze, input scales, and an added loss term were compared in a thorough ablation study. Furthermore, recent techniques to enhance PINN convergence, including random Fourier feature embeddings and adaptive time weighting, have been incorporated. Our results demonstrate that the QPINN achieves accuracy comparable to, and even greater than, the classical PINN baseline, while using a significantly smaller number of trainable parameters. This study also demonstrates that adding an energy conservation term to the loss stabilizes training and improves the physical fidelity of the solution in the lossless free-space case. This added term helps mitigate a new kind of barren plateau (BP) related phenomenon - “black hole” (BH) loss landscape for the quantum experiments in that scenario. By optimizing the quantum-circuit ansatz and embedding energy-conservation constraints, our QPINN achieves up to a 19% higher accuracy on 2D Maxwell benchmark problems compared to a classical PINN.
Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) often struggle on nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) with sharp gradients, stiff dynamics, high-frequency content, or multiscale structure. Such limitations, rooted in spectral bias, ill-conditioned optimization, and unstable convergence, restrict PINN accuracy in regimes where advanced solvers are most needed. In this work, we develop a hybrid quantum-classical physics-informed neural network (HQPINN) that integrates a classical neural-network backbone with a parameterized quantum circuit (PQC) to enrich the solution representation. The framework is benchmarked against a classical PINN on three representative nonlinear PDEs: Burgers' equation, the Allen-Cahn equation, and the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation. The framework is further examined through a systematic sensitivity analysis of qubit count, circuit depth, PQC placement, collocation density, and classical-network width. Across all benchmarks, HQPINNs exhibit smoother training dynamics, reduced loss oscillations, and improved final accuracy, with the largest gains occurring in stiff and multiscale regimes. Relative L2 error decreases by about fourfold for Burgers' equation and fivefold for the Allen-Cahn equation, while improvements for the KdV equation are more moderate. Overall, the results demonstrate that carefully co-designed hybrid quantum-classical architectures can mitigate key limitations of classical PINNs and provide practical design guidance for near-term quantum-enhanced PDE solvers.
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.
This paper proposes a novel approach for solving nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) with a quantum computer, the trainable embedding quantum physics informed neural network (TE-QPINN). We combine quantum machine learning (QML) with physics informed neural networks (PINNs) in a hybrid approach. By leveraging the advantages of classical and quantum computers, we can create algorithms that have a potential to be run on noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices (NISQ). We use feedforward neural networks (FNN) as problem-agnostic embedding functions, giving the used quantum circuit greater expressibility than previously introduced embedding. This expressibility allows us to solve a wide range of problems without using a problem specific ansatz. Additionally, we introduce a hybrid backpropagation algorithm that allows efficient updates of the used weights and biases in the FNN embedding functions. In this paper we showcase the capabilities of TE-QPINNs of a wide range of problems, including the two-dimensional Poisson, Burgers and Navier-Stokes equations. In direct comparison with classical PINNs, this approach showed an ability to achieve superior results while using the same number of parameters, highlighting their potential for more efficient optimization in high-dimensional parameter spaces, which could be transformative for future applications.