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Much Ado about Quantum Signal Processing: Phase-Finding, Application, and Interpretation

Skelton, Shawna Erica Sullivan

Published Jan 1, 2026• 0 citations

Abstract

Quantum signal processing (QSP) is a template for designing algorithms in the quantum circuit model. We consider three facets of this template. First, how to compute the exact circuit for a given algorithm and problem parameters. QSP requires two interrelated pre-processing steps. We give an algorithm for the first step, and compare its performance to recent alternatives. We find that our algorithm, using the Wilson method, is competitive for sparse polynomials away from the near-coherent regime. Next, we give an algorithm for quantum phase or energy estimation (QPE and QEE), designed with QSP. QEE replaces the common oracle access model in QPE with a block-encoding. We use von Neumann's measurement protocol and Hamiltonian simulation with QSP to show that QEE can be solved efficiently. We then show that when the standard QPE oracle is block-encoded, QPE algorithm with logarithmic overhead. We also show that whenever the system of interest is described by a linear combination of Pauli terms, the gate complexity of the entire algorithm is efficient in Clifford and T gates. We then consider how QSP relates to time-evolution. We show that QSP circuits can be understood as the circuits generated by a piecewise continuous time-evolution. Specifically, this evolution fits the bilinear control model, a common model in quantum control theory. Finally, we engineer a continuous time-dependent system for which the quantum adiabatic theorem will hold, which syntactically resembles QSP. We show that in the high-degree and small-signal limit, when the adiabatic schedule is Lipschitz continuous, the quantum adiabatic evolution of an eigenstate of H(0) is close to a QSP circuit applied to the same eigenstate. Crucially, our formalism establishes a direct functional relationship between the adiabatic schedule and the set of phase factors that determine the QSP circuit.

DOI: 10.15488/22406

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Quantum signal processing (QSP) is a template for designing algorithms in the quantum circuit model. We consider three facets of this template. First, how to compute the exact circuit for a given algorithm and problem parameters. QSP requires two interrelated pre-processing steps. We give an algorithm for the first step, and compare its performance to recent alternatives. We find that our algorithm, using the Wilson method, is competitive for sparse polynomials away from the near-coherent regime. Next, we give an algorithm for quantum phase or energy estimation (QPE and QEE), designed with QSP. QEE replaces the common oracle access model in QPE with a block-encoding. We use von Neumann's measurement protocol and Hamiltonian simulation with QSP to show that QEE can be solved efficiently. We then show that when the standard QPE oracle is block-encoded, QPE algorithm with logarithmic overhead. We also show that whenever the system of interest is described by a linear combination of Pauli terms, the gate complexity of the entire algorithm is efficient in Clifford and T gates. We then consider how QSP relates to time-evolution. We show that QSP circuits can be understood as the circuits generated by a piecewise continuous time-evolution. Specifically, this evolution fits the bilinear control model, a common model in quantum control theory. Finally, we engineer a continuous time-dependent system for which the quantum adiabatic theorem will hold, which syntactically resembles QSP. We show that in the high-degree and small-signal limit, when the adiabatic schedule is Lipschitz continuous, the quantum adiabatic evolution of an eigenstate of H(0) is close to a QSP circuit applied to the same eigenstate. Crucially, our formalism establishes a direct functional relationship between the adiabatic schedule and the set of phase factors that determine the QSP circuit.

Quantum signal processing (QSP) relies on a historically costly pre-processing step, "QSP-processing/phase-factor finding." QSP-processing is now a developed topic within quantum algorithms literature, and a beginner accessible review of QSP-processing is overdue. This work provides a whirlwind tour through QSP conventions and pre-processing methods, beginning from a pedagogically accessible QSP convention. We then review QSP conventions associated with three common polynomial types: real polynomials with definite parity, sums of reciprocal/anti-reciprocal Chebyshev polynomials, and complex polynomials. We demonstrate how the conventions perform with respect to three criteria: circuit length, polynomial conditions, and pre-processing methods. We then review the recently introduced Wilson method for QSP-processing and give conditions where it can succeed with bound error. Although the resulting bound is not computationally efficient, we demonstrate that the method succeeds with linear error propagation for relevant target polynomials and precision regimes, including the Jacobi-Anger expansion used in Hamiltonian simulation algorithms. We then apply our benchmarks to three QSP-processing methods for QSP circuits and show that a method introduced by Berntson and Sünderhauf outperforms both the Wilson method and the standard optimization strategy for complex polynomials.

Quantum signal processing (QSP) is a powerful quantum algorithm to exactly implement matrix polynomials on quantum computers. Asymptotic analysis of quantum algorithms based on QSP has shown that asymptotically optimal results can in principle be obtained for a range of tasks, such as Hamiltonian simulation and the quantum linear system problem. A further benefit of QSP is that it uses a minimal number of ancilla qubits, which facilitates its implementation on near-to-intermediate term quantum architectures. However, there is so far no classically stable algorithm allowing computation of the phase factors that are needed to build QSP circuits. Existing methods require the use of variable precision arithmetic and can only be applied to polynomials of a relatively low degree. We present here an optimization-based method that can accurately compute the phase factors using standard double precision arithmetic operations. We demonstrate the performance of this approach with applications to Hamiltonian simulation, eigenvalue filtering, and quantum linear system problems. Our numerical results show that the optimization algorithm can find phase factors to accurately approximate polynomials of a degree larger than

10\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}000

with errors below ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}12}$.

Quantum phase estimation (QPE) is a central algorithmic primitive that estimates eigenvalues of a Hamiltonian up to precision

ε

in Heisenberg-limited time

T=Θ(1/ε)

. Standard gate-based implementations of QPE require deep controlled time-evolution circuits and are not native to analog hardware. Here, we present a simple adiabatic protocol for QPE that achieves (up to logarithmic factors) the optimal Heisenberg-limited scaling

T = O\left( \frac{1}ε \log\left(δ^{-1}\right)\right)

in both the precision

ε

and failure probability

δ

. By encoding eigenvalues in populations of computational basis states rather than complex phases, our approach is naturally robust against certain dephasing errors. The adiabatic protocol only requires the ability to couple a single ancilla qubit to the system Hamiltonian as well as pairwise couplings within the ancilla register.

We investigate an analogy between quantum signal processing (QSP) and the adiabatic-impulse model (AIM) in order to implement the QSP algorithm with fast quantum logic gates. QSP is an algorithmic technique that uses single-qubit dynamics to perform a polynomial function transformation. The adiabatic-impulse model effectively describes the evolution of a two-level quantum system under a strong external driving field. We can map parameters from QSP to the AIM to implement a QSP-like evolution with nonadiabatic, high-amplitude external drives. By choosing the AIM driving parameters that control the nonadiabatic transition parameters (such as driving amplitude A , frequency ω , and signal timing), one can achieve polynomial approximations and increase robustness in quantum circuits. The analogy between QSP and AIM presented here can be useful as a way to directly implement the QSP algorithmic technique on quantum systems and show the benefits from fast Landau-Zener-Stückelberg-Majorana (LZSM) quantum logic gates in comparison with usual resonance driving gates in IBM-Q quantum processors.

Modern quantum algorithms are increasingly formulated as coherent procedures for implementing polynomial transformations of operators and singular values. This perspective provides a powerful and unifying language for quantum algorithm design, connecting a wide range of distinct problems through five closely related key tools: block-encoding, qubitization, QSP, QSVT and GQSP. Block-encoding embeds non-unitary matrices into larger unitaries; qubitization converts block-encodings into structured operators; QSP, QSVT and GQSP enable polynomial transformations with near-optimal query complexity. Together, these techniques form a general toolkit for transforming matrix functions into implementable quantum circuits. This paper develops these techniques from first principles as a unified framework for constructing quantum algorithms. We apply this framework to representative applications to highlight design principles and demonstrate how distinct algorithms can be constructed from a unified sequence of operator transformations. A central contribution is a systematic decision workflow for selecting the appropriate approach according to the operator structure and the desired transformation polynomial. This perspective clarifies when direct GQSP or through qubitization, or Laurent expansion, or QSVT is most appropriate. We organize algorithmic design into an end-to-end pipeline: identifying the target matrix function, constructing an appropriate block-encoding, determining the relevant spectral domain, designing a polynomial or Laurent-polynomial approximation, synthesizing the phase factors, and translating the transformation into an executable quantum circuit. By applying this unified framework to example applications, we showcase a practical methodology for reasoning, designing, and implementing quantum algorithms based on polynomial transformations.

Abstract Quantum signal processing (QSP) is a powerful toolbox for the design of quantum algorithms and can lead to asymptotically optimal computational costs. Its realization on noisy quantum computers without fault tolerance, however, is challenging because it requires a deep quantum circuit in general. We propose a strategy to run an entire QSP protocol on noisy quantum hardware by carefully reducing overhead costs at each step. To illustrate the approach, we consider the application of Hamiltonian simulation for which QSP implements a polynomial approximation of the time evolution operator. We test the protocol by running the algorithm on the Quantinuum H1-1 trapped-ion quantum computer powered by Honeywell. In particular, we compute the time dependence of bipartite entanglement entropies for Ising spin chains and find good agreements with exact numerical simulations. To make the best use of the device, we determine optimal experimental parameters by using a simplified error model for the hardware and numerically studying the trade-off between Hamiltonian simulation time, polynomial degree, and total accuracy. Our results are the first step in the experimental realization of QSP-based quantum algorithms.