Feasibility of accelerating incompressible computational fluid dynamics simulations with fault-tolerant quantum computers

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2406.06323
• Publication Date: 2024-06-10
• Authors: John Penuel; Amara Katabarwa; P. D. Johnson; Collin Farquhar; Yudong Cao; Michael C. Garrett
• Keywords: Quantum Physics; FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Across industries, traditional design and engineering workflows are being upgraded to simulation-driven processes. Many include computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Simulations of turbulent flow notorious for high compute costs reliance on approximate methods that compromise accuracy. Improvements in the speed accuracy CFD calculations would potentially reduce workflow by reducing eliminating need experimental testing. This study explores feasibility using fault-tolerant quantum computers improve simulations incompressible or weakly compressible regime. For example ship design, we consider calculating drag force steady-state flows, provide analysis economic utility classical hardness. As a waypoint toward assessing our chosen approach, estimate resources required simpler case sphere. We product logical qubits $\times$ $T$ gates range from $10^{22}$ $10^{28}$. These initial estimates suggest future unlikely applications unless significant algorithmic advancements alternative approaches developed. Encouraged chemistry have realized orders-of-magnitude improvements as they matured, identify most promising next steps resource reduction work scale up spheres utility-scale problems with more complex geometry.