FEqa: Finite element computations on quantum annealers

Abstract

The solution of physical problems discretized using the finite element methods using NISQ quantum hardware remains relatively unexplored. Here, we present a unified formulation (FEqa) to solve such problems using quantum annealers. FEqa is a hybrid technique in which the finite element problem is formulated on a classical computer, and the residual is minimized using a quantum annealer. The advantages of FEqa include utilizing a single qubit per degree of freedom, enforcing Dirichlet boundary conditions a priori, reaching arbitrary solution precision, and eliminating the possibility of the annealer generating invalid results. FEqa is scalable on the classical portion of the algorithm due to its Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) nature and does not rely on ground state solutions from the annealer. The exponentially large number of collocation points used in quantum annealing are investigated for their cosine measures, and new iterative techniques are developed to exploit their properties. The quantum annealer has clear advantages in computational time over simulated annealing, for the example problems presented in this paper solved on the D-Wave machine. The presented work provides a pathway to solving physical problems using quantum annealers.