We investigate hybrid quantum–classical solvers for nonlinear boundary value problems using Chebyshev spectral collocation. Unlike prior methods such as H–DES, which repeatedly recompile circuits and encode the entire spectral basis on the quantum processor, our framework offloads only the residual minimisation to a quantum backend while retaining classical enforcement of boundary conditions. Two paradigms are considered: (i) gate-based residual minimisation on CUDA-Q using variational circuits to evaluate a Cubic Unconstrained Binary Optimisation (CUBO) cost, which naturally arises from the discretisation, and (ii) a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimisation (QUBO) reformulation, which is required for execution on a quantum annealer, executed via a classical–quantum mapping. We further explore a CUBO extension on CUDA-Q and direct residual-to-energy mapping on annealers. Benchmarks confirm that the classical solver reproduces the analytic solution with spectral accuracy; among quantum-enhanced methods, the annealer-based QUBO yields the closest approximation. The gate-based CUBO solver improves upon a legacy variational baseline but exhibits a small interior bias due to limited circuit depth and precision. These findings underscore the complementary roles of annealers and gate-based devices in hybrid scientific computing and demonstrate a feasible workflow for the NISQ era rather than a speedup over classical methods. Recent progress in quantum algorithms for differential equations signals a rapidly maturing field with significant potential for practical quantum advantage.
We investigate hybrid quantum–classical solvers for nonlinear boundary value problems using Chebyshev spectral collocation. Unlike prior methods such as H–DES, which repeatedly recompile circuits and encode the entire spectral basis on the quantum processor, our framework offloads only the residual minimisation to a quantum backend while retaining classical enforcement of boundary conditions. Two paradigms are considered: (i) gate-based residual minimisation on CUDA-Q using variational circuits to evaluate a Cubic Unconstrained Binary Optimisation (CUBO) cost, which naturally arises from the discretisation, and (ii) a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimisation (QUBO) reformulation, which is required for execution on a quantum annealer, executed via a classical–quantum mapping. We further explore a CUBO extension on CUDA-Q and direct residual-to-energy mapping on annealers. Benchmarks confirm that the classical solver reproduces the analytic solution with spectral accuracy; among quantum-enhanced methods, the annealer-based QUBO yields the closest approximation. The gate-based CUBO solver improves upon a legacy variational baseline but exhibits a small interior bias due to limited circuit depth and precision. These findings underscore the complementary roles of annealers and gate-based devices in hybrid scientific computing and demonstrate a feasible workflow for the NISQ era rather than a speedup over classical methods. Recent progress in quantum algorithms for differential equations signals a rapidly maturing field with significant potential for practical quantum advantage.
Differential equations underpin a vast range of scientific and engineering domains, including structural mechanics, fluid dynamics, and financial modelling. Their intricate nature often renders classical numerical methods computationally demanding, requiring fine discretization or large basis expansions, which can lead to prohibitive costs. Quantum computing offers a fundamentally different paradigm, leveraging superposition and entanglement with the promise of computational speedup. However, in the current Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era, fully fault-tolerant quantum computers remain decades away, motivating the development of hybrid strategies such as Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs), which train parametrised quantum circuits using classical optimizers. This work investigates spectral VQAs for solving differential equations, extending the Chebyshev-encoded VQA of Kyriienko et al. and introducing a novel quantum spectral approach: the Lagrange-encoded VQA. This approach shifts the paradigm by incorporating entanglement directly within the encoding block while maintaining a shallow variational ansatz. Inspired by the Hadamard test structure, the design enables an efficient representation of the complete set of Lagrange polynomial basis functions using a limited number of gates and facilitates the use of the Hadamard test differentiation method, thereby reducing the computational load. VQA performance is analysed through the accuracy of the result in combination with the gate count and circuit count metrics, which serve as proxies for runtime and noise accumulation on NISQ devices. The proposed VQA is benchmarked on multiple problems: (i) a first-order linear ODEs and (ii) the second-order ODEs damped mass-spring system, both comparing Lagrange- and Chebyshev-encoded VQAs, (iii) the Poisson equation, comparing the Lagrange-encoded VQA with the discretized approach of Sato et al., and (iv) a first-order ODE with nonlinear coefficients addressed with the Lagrange-encoded VQA. Across these cases, the Lagrange-encoded VQA consistently achieves comparable or improved accuracy while significantly reducing circuit depth and computational overload, making it a promising candidate for NISQ devices.
This paper explores the integration of Carleman linearization and quantum annealing to solve nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) under the Chebyshev spectral method. Using Carleman linearization, the computation of optimal Chebyshev coefficients is reformulated as a quadratic program and further transformed into a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) problem via binary expansion. This QUBO formulation is well-suited for quantum annealers, where solutions are obtained by minimizing the Hamiltonian of the corresponding Ising model. To address hardware limitations, we employ an iterative quantum annealing strategy with dynamically updated parameters. Case studies on the D-Wave platform demonstrate the potential of our approach to harness the strengths of Carleman linearization and Chebyshev approximation theory, offering continuous and differentiable solutions to nonlinear ODEs, especially promising as quantum resources become more economically viable.
Abstract We benchmark classical, simulated-quantum, hybrid, and direct quantum-annealing workflows on a structured binary control problem formulated as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) model. The benchmark is motivated by greenhouse heater scheduling, where the horizon (H) denotes the number of hourly binary control decisions, but the focus is on solver behavior for a physically decoded control-QUBO formulation. For the main one-day instance ((H=24)), all solver outputs are decoded back into heater schedules and evaluated using the same simulator-side objective and feasibility criterion. Classical simulated annealing and path-integral simulated quantum annealing produce feasible near-optimal solutions in all repetitions, with best objectives close to the exact optimum. In contrast, the tested D-Wave Leap Hybrid binary quadratic model workflow is less reliable and does not outperform the classical baselines under 15--60 s requested time limits. Direct D-Wave quantum processing unit execution on reduced instances remains feasible in all runs and recovers the exact optimum for (H=10) and (H=12), but the exact-hit rate decreases with increasing horizon. The results do not indicate quantum advantage, but provide a reproducible benchmark for evaluating annealing-based natural and quantum computing workflows on structured control QUBOs. MSC Classification: 90C27 , 90C59 , 81P68 , 93C55
Abstract We investigate the possibility and current limitations of flow computations using quantum annealers by solving a fundamental flow problem on Ising machines. As a fundamental problem, we consider the one-dimensional advection–diffusion equation. We formulate it in a form suited to Ising machines (i.e. both classical and quantum annealers), perform extensive numerical tests on a classical annealer, and finally test it on an actual quantum annealer. To make it possible to process with an Ising machine, the problem is formulated as a minimization problem of the residual of the governing equation discretized using either the spectral method or the finite difference method. The resulting system equation is then converted to the quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) form through the quantization of variables. It is found in numerical tests using a classical annealer that the spectral method requiring a smaller number of variables has a particular merit over the finite difference method because the accuracy deteriorates with the increase of the number of variables. We also found that the computational error varies depending on the condition number of the coefficient matrix. In addition, we extended it to a two-dimensional problem and confirmed its fundamental applicability. From the numerical test using a quantum annealer, however, it turns out that the computation using a quantum annealer is still challenging due largely to the structural difference from the classical annealer, which leaves a number of issues toward its practical use.
ABSTRACT Hybrid quantum–classical architectures demonstrate significant potential for efficiently solving complex physical models. This study focuses on developing and implementing a hybrid quantum–classical algorithm to solve the Muskat–Leverett model by reformulating it as a system of linear equations. By expressing the Muskat–Leverett model in matrix form , we enable the application of quantum algorithms. We leverage classical computational platforms (CPU and GPU) alongside quantum computing to efficiently solve the model, achieving competitive accuracy and demonstrating potential for scalability compared to traditional methods. The Harrow–Hassidim–Lloyd algorithm and the variational quantum linear solver were utilised to design quantum circuits and variational ansatz. The study evaluates quantum solutions with classical optimisation, variational methods, fully classical solutions on graphical processors and purely quantum solutions. Experimental results show that the hybrid architecture, utilising cuQuantum and CUDA‐Q, achieves up to 6.42× faster execution compared to CPU implementations and provides a comparable speedup to GPU‐based solvers. When applied for large‐scale problems, the hybrid approach is also ∼10× faster than standard quantum simulators. Key factors, such as qubits, optimisers and cost functions, were analysed to determine optimal parameters. These results highlight the advantages of hybrid architecture in accelerating and optimising numerical solutions for complex physical models.
Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) models are defined by quadratic expressions composed of binary variables, each taking a value of either 0 or 1. The objective of the QUBO problem is to find an optimal assignment of these binary variables that minimizes the value of the QUBO model. The QUBO problem has attracted significant research interest due to its versatility in reformulating various NP-complete problems and its potential for efficiently finding heuristic solutions through quantum annealing. This paper focuses on converting Cubic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (CUBO) problems, defined by cubic expressions, into equivalent QUBO models. Through this conversion, CUBO problems can be solved using quantum annealing. Since the important NP-hard problem 3-SAT can be straightforwardly represented as a CUBO problem, investigating the conversion from CUBO to QUBO models is a meaningful endeavor.