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Quantum Science and Technology

Quantum topological analysis on digraphs

Muchun Yang, Duan lu Zhou, Yunpeng Zi

Published Aug 10, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract Quantum algorithms for topological data analysis (TDA) provide significant advantages over the best known classical algorithms. Unlike previous work on simplicial complexes built from point clouds, path homology on digraphs is defined for directed graphs and provides a natural topological framework for analyzing data with intrinsic directional structures. Path homology has become an emerging area in TDA, attracting increasing attention in recent years. We propose a quantum algorithm for path homology on digraphs that offers a significant advantage over the best known classical algorithms. We design a universal encoding protocol for the paths and boundary operators of digraphs on quantum systems. We prove a property of path homology that provides the theoretical guarantee for the algorithm. The speedup of the quantum algorithm for path homology depends on input-access assumptions. The exponential speedup arises when the path space can be efficiently accessed, while for standard digraph input the algorithm provides polynomial speedup.

DOI
10.1088/2058-9565/ae978e

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Abstract Quantum algorithms for topological data analysis (TDA) provide significant advantages over the best known classical algorithms. Unlike previous work on simplicial complexes built from point clouds, path homology on digraphs is defined for directed graphs and provides a natural topological framework for analyzing data with intrinsic directional structures. Path homology has become an emerging area in TDA, attracting increasing attention in recent years. We propose a quantum algorithm for path homology on digraphs that offers a significant advantage over the best known classical algorithms. We design a universal encoding protocol for the paths and boundary operators of digraphs on quantum systems. We prove a property of path homology that provides the theoretical guarantee for the algorithm. The speedup of the quantum algorithm for path homology depends on input-access assumptions. The exponential speedup arises when the path space can be efficiently accessed, while for standard digraph input the algorithm provides polynomial speedup.
Quantum algorithms for topological data analysis provide significant advantages over the best known classical algorithms. Unlike previous work on simplicial complexes built from point clouds, path homology on digraphs is defined for directed graphs and provides a natural topological framework for analyzing data with intrinsic directional structures. Path homology has become an emerging area in Topological Data Analysis (TDA), attracting increasing attention in recent years. We propose a quantum algorithm for path homology on digraphs that offers a significant advantage over the best known classical algorithms. We design a universal encoding protocol for the paths and boundary operators of digraphs on quantum systems. We prove a property of path homology that provides the theoretical guarantee for the algorithm. The speedup of the quantum algorithm for path homology depends on input-access assumptions. The exponential speedup arises when the path space can be efficiently accessed, while for standard digraph input the algorithm provides polynomial speedup.
Given a data set with a notion of distance, such as a point cloud in Euclidean space, topological data analysis (TDA) uses techniques from algebraic topology and metric geometry to infer the topology of a hypothetical manifold from which the data are sampled. This inference is achieved by calculating topological invariants, some of which are difficult to compute classically. Meanwhile, quantum TDA utilizes quantum processes to extract the invariants used in making such inferences in an attempt to speed up the computations. Because applying transformations to the original classical dataset could alter the associated topological invariants, we investigate which quantum encodings would best preserve the invariants of the original dataset. This line of inquiry is distinct from standard approaches in quantum TDA, whose typical starting point is not from the classical dataset directly, but rather from the associated combinatorial objects, such as simplicial complexes, which typically demand a lot of resources to construct. We take the first step at a more direct approach by focusing on which quantum encodings acting directly on the data are admissible for applying quantum algorithms to extract topological features from classical datasets.
Prior work has explored quantum algorithms for topological data analysis (TDA), revealing the possibility of exponential quantum speedups in estimating the ratios of Betti numbers to the dimension of the combinatorial Laplacian. However, this quantity is only non-vanishing and efficient-to-quantumly-estimate when Betti numbers are exponentially large, a case for which concrete examples are rarely known. Furthermore, certain randomized classical algorithms are sometimes efficient in this regime. Thus, the prospect of achieving quantum advantage in conventional TDA appears fairly narrow. Here, we address these challenges to the quantum advantage in TDA by developing quantum algorithms for Mayer homology, which generalize simplicial homology to NNN-nilpotent boundary operators (∂N=0\partial^N =0∂N=0) and have recently been successfully applied to real-world TDA contexts. We introduce an efficient quantum algorithm for estimating Mayer Betti numbers and their persistent counterparts. We then prove that for high-order simplices, Mayer Betti numbers are often exponentially large in the dense regime, which ameliorates the normalization bottleneck of conventional quantum TDA. In the same regime, we argue that existing dequantization algorithms developed for conventional TDA, when applied to Mayer homology, generally lose theoretical guaranties, facing certain structural barriers that prevent their practical utilities. We also provide logical resource estimates revealing that a quantum computer with roughly a few hundred qubits and sixty million Toffoli gates could solve Mayer homology problems beyond the capabilities of known classical approaches. Finally, we discuss real-world applications of Mayer homology in genomics, supersymmetry, drug discovery, and neuroscience, revealing the potential of our quantum algorithm to deliver real-world impacts via Mayer homology.
Topological data analysis (TDA) is an emergent field of data analysis. The critical step of TDA is computing the persistent Betti numbers. Existing classical algorithms for TDA are limited if we want to learn from high-dimensional topological features because the number of high-dimensional simplices grows exponentially in the size of the data. In the context of quantum computation, it has been previously shown that there exists an efficient quantum algorithm for estimating the Betti numbers even in high dimensions. However, the Betti numbers are less general than the persistent Betti numbers, and there have been no quantum algorithms that can estimate the persistent Betti numbers of arbitrary dimensions. This paper shows the first quantum algorithm that can estimate the (normalized) persistent Betti numbers of arbitrary dimensions. Our algorithm is efficient for simplicial complexes such as the Vietoris-Rips complex and demonstrates exponential speedup over the known classical algorithms.
Quantum algorithms for topological data analysis (TDA) seem to provide an exponential advantage over the best classical approach while remaining immune to dequantization procedures and the data-loading problem.In this paper, we give complexity-theoretic evidence that the central task of TDA-estimating Betti numbers-is intractable even for quantum computers.Specifically, we prove that the problem of computing Betti numbers exactly is #P-hard, while the problem of approximating Betti numbers up to multiplicative error is NP-hard.Moreover, both problems retain their hardness if restricted to the regime where quantum algorithms for TDA perform best.Because quantum computers are not expected to solve #P-hard or NP-hard problems in subexponential time, our results imply that quantum algorithms for TDA offer only a polynomial advantage in the worst case.We support our claim by showing that the seminal quantum algorithm for TDA developed by Lloyd, Garnerone, and Zanardi achieves a quadratic speedup over the best-known classical approach in asymptotically almost all cases.Finally, we argue that an exponential quantum advantage can be recovered if the input data is given as a specification of simplices rather than as a list of vertices and edges.
Quantum algorithms for topological data analysis (TDA) seem to provide an exponential advantage over the best classical approach while remaining immune to dequantization procedures and the data-loading problem. In this paper, we give complexity-theoretic evidence that the central task of TDA -- estimating Betti numbers -- is intractable even for quantum computers. Specifically, we prove that the problem of computing Betti numbers exactly is #P-hard, while the problem of approximating Betti numbers up to multiplicative error is NP-hard. Moreover, both problems retain their hardness if restricted to the regime where quantum algorithms for TDA perform best. Because quantum computers are not expected to solve #P-hard or NP-hard problems in subexponential time, our results imply that quantum algorithms for TDA offer only a polynomial advantage in the worst case. We support our claim by showing that the seminal quantum algorithm for TDA developed by Lloyd, Garnerone and Zanardi achieves a quadratic speedup over the best known classical approach in asymptotically almost all cases. Finally, we argue that an exponential quantum advantage can be recovered if the input data is given as a specification of simplices rather than as a list of vertices and edges.