We present a quantum computing algorithm for fluid flows based on the Carleman-linearization of the Lattice Boltzmann (LB) method. First, we demonstrate the convergence of the classical Carleman procedure at moderate Reynolds numbers, namely, for Kolmogorov-like flows. Then we proceed to formulate the corresponding quantum algorithm, including the quantum circuit layout, and analyze its computational viability. We show that, at least for moderate Reynolds numbers between 10 and 100, the Carleman–LB procedure can be successfully truncated at second order, which is a very encouraging result. We also show that the quantum circuit implementing the single time-step collision operator has a fixed depth, regardless of the number of lattice sites. However, such depth is of the order of ten thousands quantum gates, meaning that quantum advantage over classical computing is not attainable today, but could be achieved in the near or mid-term future. The same goal for the multi-step version remains, however, an open topic for future research.

We discuss the Carleman approach to the quantum simulation of classical fluids, as applied to (i) lattice Boltzmann, (ii) Navier–Stokes, and (iii) Grad formulations of fluid dynamics. Carleman lattice Boltzmann shows excellent convergence properties, but it is plagued by nonlocality which results in an exponential depth of the corresponding circuit with the number of Carleman variables. The Carleman Navier–Stokes offers a dramatic reduction of the number Carleman variables, which might lead to a viable depth, provided locality can be preserved and convergence can be achieved with a moderate number of iterates also at sizeable Reynolds numbers. Finally, it is argued that Carleman Grad might combine the best of Carleman lattice Boltzmann and Carleman Navier–Stokes.

We apply Carleman linearization of the Lattice Boltzmann (CLB) representation of fluid flows to quantum emulate the dynamics of a two-dimensional Kolmogorov-like flow. We assess the accuracy of the result and find a relative error of the order of 10−3 with just two Carleman iterates for a range of the Reynolds number up to a few hundreds. We first define a gate-based quantum circuit for the implementation of the CLB method and then exploit the sparse nature of the CLB matrix to build a quantum circuit based on block-encoding techniques which makes use of matrix oracles. It is shown that the gate complexity of the algorithm is thereby dramatically reduced, from exponential to quadratic. However, due to the need of employing up to seven ancilla qubits, the probability of success of the corresponding circuit for a single time step is too low to enable multi-step time evolution. Several possible directions to circumvent this problem are briefly outlined.

We assess the convergence of the Carleman linearization of advection-diffusion-reaction (ADR) equations with a logistic nonlinearity. It is shown that five Carleman iterates provide a satisfactory approximation of the original ADR across a broad range of parameters and strength of nonlinearity. To assess the feasibility of a quantum algorithm based on this linearization, we analyze the projection of the Carleman ADR matrix onto the tensor Pauli basis. It is found that the Carleman ADR matrix requires an exponential number of Pauli gates as a function of the number of qubits. This prevents the practical implementation of the Carleman approach to the quantum simulation of ADR problems on current hardware. We propose to address this limitation by resorting to block-encoding techniques for sparse matrix employing oracles. Such quantum ADR oracles are presented in explicit form and shown to turn the exponential complexity into a polynomial one. However, due to the low probability of successfully implementing the nonunitary Carleman operator, further research is needed to implement the multi–timestep version of the present circuit.

Although entanglement is a basic resource for reaching quantum advantage in many computation and information protocols, we lack a universal recipe for detecting it, with analytical results obtained for low-dimensional systems and few special cases of higher-dimensional systems. In this work, we use a machine learning algorithm, the support vector machine with polynomial kernel, to classify separable and entangled states. We apply it to two-qubit and three-qubit systems, and we show that, after training, the support vector machine is able to recognize if a random state is entangled with an accuracy up to $$92\%$$92 % for the two-qubit system and up to $$98\%$$98 % for the three-qubit system. We also describe why and in what regime the support vector machine algorithm is able to implement the evaluation of an entanglement witness operator applied to many copies of the state, and we describe how we can translate this procedure into a quantum circuit.

The quantum simulation of classical fluids often involves the use of probabilistic algorithms that encode the result of the dynamics in the form of the amplitude of the selected quantum state. In most cases, however, the amplitude probability is too low to allow an efficient use of these algorithms, thereby hindering the practical viability of the quantum simulation. The oblivious amplitude amplification (OAA) algorithm is often presented as a solution to this problem, but to no avail for most classical problems, since its applicability is limited to unitary dynamics. In this paper, we show analytically that OAA when applied to non-unitary dynamics leads to a distortion of the quantum state and to an accompanying error in the quantum update. We provide an analytical upper bound of such error as a function of the degree of non-unitarity of the dynamics and we test it against a quantum simulation of an advection-diffusion-reaction equation, a transport problem of major relevance in science and engineering. Finally, we also propose an amplification strategy that helps mitigate the distortion error, while still securing an enhanced success probability.