Explicit block-encodings for biharmonic boundary-value problems
This work provides a quantum algorithm framework for a fundamental fourth-order PDE, potentially benefiting computational science applications that require high-dimensional biharmonic solves.
The authors develop explicit block-encodings for the biharmonic equation under various boundary conditions, enabling quantum linear-system algorithms with condition-number scaling of a second-order operator. Numerical experiments validate the discretizations and linear solves.
The biharmonic equation is a prototypical fourth-order partial differential equation whose high-dimensional discretization suffers from rapidly growing degrees of freedom and severe ill-conditioning. We develop QSVT--VTAA quantum linear-system algorithms by constructing explicit block-encodings tailored to periodic, simply supported, and Dirichlet--Neumann boundary conditions. For periodic and simply supported problems, Fourier and sine-transform diagonalizations yield augmented Poisson systems with the condition-number scaling of a second-order operator. For Dirichlet--Neumann problems, we introduce a second-order boundary-corrected finite-difference discretization, establish mesh-independent stability, and construct an explicit block-encoding of the resulting nonsymmetric matrix. We also formulate a coupled-Laplace system with additional boundary unknowns and characterize its complexity in terms of the condition number of the complete augmented matrix. The analysis covers discretization error, block-encoding normalization, gate complexity, and solution extraction under an amplitude-input and quantum-state-output model. Numerical experiments validate the proposed discretizations and the corresponding linear solves.