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Calculating response functions of coupled oscillators using quantum phase estimation

Sven Danz, Mario Berta, Stefan Schröder, Pascal Kienast, Frank K. Wilhelm, Alessandro Ciani

Published Jan 1, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We study the problem of estimating frequency response functions of systems of coupled, classical harmonic oscillators using a quantum computer. The functional form of these response functions can be mapped to a corresponding eigenproblem of a Hermitian matrix 𝐻, thus suggesting the use of quantum phase estimation. Our proposed quantum algorithm operates in the standard 𝑠-sparse, oracle-based query access model. For a network of 𝑁 oscillators with maximum norm ∥𝐻∥max, and when the eigenvalue tolerance ɛ is much smaller than the minimum eigenvalue gap, we use 𝒪(log(𝑁⁢𝑠⁢∥𝐻∥max⁢/ɛ) algorithmic qubits and obtain a rigorous worst-case query complexity upper bound 𝒪⁢(𝑠⁢∥𝐻∥max/(𝛿2⁢ɛ)) up to logarithmic factors, where 𝛿 denotes the desired precision on the coefficients appearing in the response functions. Crucially, our proposal does not suffer from the infamous state preparation bottleneck and can as such potentially achieve large quantum speedups compared to relevant classical methods. As a proof-of-principle of exponential quantum speedup, we show that a simple adaptation of our algorithm solves the random glued-trees problem in polynomial time. We discuss practical limitations as well as potential improvements for quantifying finite-size, end-to-end complexities for application to relevant instances.

DOI
10.34734/fzj-2026-00980

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We study the problem of estimating frequency response functions of systems of coupled, classical harmonic oscillators using a quantum computer. The functional form of these response functions can be mapped to a corresponding eigenproblem of a Hermitian matrix 𝐻, thus suggesting the use of quantum phase estimation. Our proposed quantum algorithm operates in the standard 𝑠-sparse, oracle-based query access model. For a network of 𝑁 oscillators with maximum norm ∥𝐻∥max, and when the eigenvalue tolerance ɛ is much smaller than the minimum eigenvalue gap, we use 𝒪(log(𝑁⁢𝑠⁢∥𝐻∥max⁢/ɛ) algorithmic qubits and obtain a rigorous worst-case query complexity upper bound 𝒪⁢(𝑠⁢∥𝐻∥max/(𝛿2⁢ɛ)) up to logarithmic factors, where 𝛿 denotes the desired precision on the coefficients appearing in the response functions. Crucially, our proposal does not suffer from the infamous state preparation bottleneck and can as such potentially achieve large quantum speedups compared to relevant classical methods. As a proof-of-principle of exponential quantum speedup, we show that a simple adaptation of our algorithm solves the random glued-trees problem in polynomial time. We discuss practical limitations as well as potential improvements for quantifying finite-size, end-to-end complexities for application to relevant instances.
We study the problem of estimating frequency response functions of systems of coupled, classical harmonic oscillators using a quantum computer. The functional form of these response functions can be mapped to a corresponding eigenproblem of a Hermitian matrix H , thus suggesting the use of quantum phase estimation. Our proposed quantum algorithm operates in the standard s -sparse, oracle-based query access model. For a network of N oscillators with maximum norm ∥ H ∥ max , and when the eigenvalue tolerance ɛ is much smaller than the minimum eigenvalue gap, we use O ( log ( N s ∥ H ∥ max / ɛ ) algorithmic qubits and obtain a rigorous worst-case query complexity upper bound O ( s ∥ H ∥ max / ( δ 2 ɛ ) ) up to logarithmic factors, where δ denotes the desired precision on the coefficients appearing in the response functions. Crucially, our proposal does not suffer from the infamous state preparation bottleneck and can as such potentially achieve large quantum speedups compared to relevant classical methods. As a proof-of-principle of exponential quantum speedup, we show that a simple adaptation of our algorithm solves the random glued-trees problem in polynomial time. We discuss practical limitations as well as potential improvements for quantifying finite-size, end-to-end complexities for application to relevant instances.
We present a quantum algorithm for simulating the classical dynamics of 2 n coupled oscillators (e.g., 2 n masses coupled by springs).Our approach leverages a mapping between the Schrödinger equation and Newton's equation for harmonic potentials such that the amplitudes of the evolved quantum state encode the momenta and displacements of the classical oscillators.When individual masses and spring constants can be efficiently queried, and when the initial state can be efficiently prepared, the complexity of our quantum algorithm is polynomial in n, almost linear in the evolution time, and sublinear in the sparsity.As an example application, we apply our quantum algorithm to efficiently estimate the kinetic energy of an oscillator at any time.We show that any classical algorithm solving this same problem is inefficient and must make 2 ΩðnÞ queries to the oracle, and when the oracles are instantiated by efficient quantum circuits, the problem is bounded-error quantum polynomial time complete.Thus, our approach solves a potentially practical application with an exponential speedup over classical computers.Finally, we show that under similar conditions our approach can efficiently simulate more general classical harmonic systems with 2 n modes.
We study hybrid quantum-classical algorithms in the query model. The computation consists of quantum subroutines that make at most qqq oracle queries; between subroutines, all qubits are measured and discarded. We prove matching upper and lower bounds for several problems in this model: (i) (Unbiased) Phase estimation up to a precision εεε requires Θ(1qε2)Θ(\frac{1}{q ε^2})Θ(qε21​) queries; (ii) (Unbiased) Amplitude estimation up to a precision εεε requires Θ(p(1−p)qε2)Θ(\frac{p(1-p)}{q ε^2})Θ(qε2p(1−p)​) queries; (iii) Search among NNN items requires Θ(Nq)Θ(\frac{N}{q})Θ(qN​) queries; (iv) Two level AND-OR tree (AND of mmm ORs, with nnn inputs to each OR) requires Θ(nmq)Θ(\frac{nm}{q})Θ(qnm​) queries. All of these bounds are optimal up to a constant factor, for all qqq from 1, corresponding to the classical complexity, to Q(f)Q(f)Q(f), the unrestricted quantum query complexity of the respective problem. We also derive a hybrid lower bound for distinguishing two distributions specified by a state-preparation unitary; this bound is tight up to a logarithmic factor. Besides specific lower bounds, an important contribution is developing methods for proving lower bounds on hybrid quantum algorithms (which have been very ad-hoc up to now). The first two bounds follow from a common framework: we analyze probability distributions over measurement transcripts and bound a progress measure that captures their distinguishability. The AND-OR bound requires a more delicate argument, combining two progress measures that track the information available to the algorithm classically and in quantum form, respectively.
We study the problem of simulating the time evolution of a system of 2nclassical coupled oscillators (e.g., 2nballs connected by springs) on a quantum computer. We map Newton’s equation for harmonic potentials to Schrödinger’s equation, such that the amplitudes of an O(n)\mathcal{O}(n)O(n)-qubit quantum state encode the momenta and displacements of the 2nclassical oscillators. Given oracle access to the masses and spring constants, we describe a quantum algorithm with query and time complexity poly (n) that solves this problem when certain parameters are polynomially bounded and the initial state is easy to prepare. As an example application, we apply our quantum algorithm to efficiently estimate the normalized kinetic energy of an oscillator at any time. We then show that any classical algorithm solving the same problem must make 2Ω(n)2^{\Omega(n)}2Ω(n) queries to the oracle and we also show that when the oracles are instantiated by poly (n)-size circuits, the problem is BQP-complete. Thus, our approach solves a potentially practical application with an exponential speedup over classical computers.
Natural frequencies and normal modes are basic properties of a structure which play important roles in analyses of its vibrational characteristics. As their computation reduces to solving eigenvalue problems, it is a natural arena for application of quantum phase estimation algorithms, in particular for large systems. In this paper, we take up some simple examples of (classical) coupled oscillators and show how the algorithm works by using qubitization methods based on a sparse structure of the matrix. We explicitly construct block-encoding oracles along the way, showing an exponential advantage over any known classical methods. We also propose a way to prepare initial states, and briefly touch on a more generic oracle construction for systems with repetitive structure. As a demonstration, we also give some estimates of the necessary number of physical qubits and actual runtime it takes when carried out on a fault-tolerant quantum computer.
We present a quantum algorithm for simulating classical oscillator networks characterized by non-Markovian dissipation and time-varying material properties, extending recent speedups for undamped harmonic systems to viscoacoustic and viscoelastic media. We embed the history-dependent dynamics into a Markovian state space governed by a non-Hermitian operator by approximating memory kernels through a Prony series. We then use linear combination of Hamiltonian simulation to estimate the instantaneous kinetic and potential energy for a subset of oscillators at time ttt within error εεε using a number of queries to the oscillator system that scales as O~(αtott/ε)\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(α_{\rm tot} t/ε)O(αtot​t/ε), where αtotα_{\rm tot}αtot​ is polynomial in the strength of the dissipation, spring constants, inverse masses, and sparsity of the connections in the network. We further show that this energy estimation task is in the worst-case classically hard (i.e., a corresponding decision problem is BQP\mathsf{BQP}BQP-complete), even in the presence of strong dissipation. For time-dependent materials, we show that changes in material properties appear as effective dissipation or growth in the energy representation. Additionally, we prove the infeasibility of exponential quantum advantages in locally coupled topologies through a novel form of Lieb-Robinson-like bounds that apply to differential equations. This allows our quantum algorithms to provide quartic speedups for locally coupled damped oscillator systems in three dimensions, raising the possibility of practical quantum speedups for realistically damped oscillator networks and approximated wave equations.