Quantum algorithm for the gradient of a logarithm-determinant

The logarithm-determinant is an widely-present operation in many areas of physics and computer science. Derivatives of the logarithm-determinant compute physically relevant quantities in statistical physics models, quantum field theories, as well as the inverses of matrices. A multi-variable version of the quantum gradient algorithm is developed here to evaluate the derivative of the logarithm-determinant. From this, the inverse of a sparse-rank input operator may be determined efficiently. Measuring an expectation value of the quantum state--instead of all $N^2$ elements of the input operator--can be accomplished in $O(k/\varepsilon^2)$ time in the idealized case for $k$ relevant eigenvectors of the input matrix with precision $\varepsilon$. A practical implementation of the required operator will likely need $\log_2N$ overhead, giving an overall complexity of $O((k\log_2 N)/\varepsilon^2)$. The method applies widely and converges super-linearly in $k$ when the condition number is high. The best classical method we are aware of scales as $N$. Given the same resource assumptions as other algorithms, such that an equal superposition of eigenvectors is available efficiently, the algorithm is evaluated in the practical case as $O(\log_2 N/\varepsilon^2)$. The output is given in $O(1)$ queries of oracle, which is given explicitly here and only relies on time-evolution operators that can be implemented with arbitrarily small error. The algorithm is envisioned for fully error-corrected quantum computers but may be implementable on near-term machines. We discuss how this algorithm can be used for kernel-based quantum machine-learning.