Quantum Discrete Variable Representations
Abstract
We present a fault-tolerant quantum algorithm for implementing the Discrete Variable Representation (DVR) transformation, a technique widely used in simulations of quantum-mechanical Hamiltonians. DVR provides a diagonal representation of local operators and enables sparse Hamiltonian structures, making it a powerful alternative to the finite basis representation (FBR), particularly in high-dimensional problems. While DVR has been extensively used in classical simulations, its quantum implementation, particularly using Gaussian quadrature grids, remains underexplored. We develop a quantum circuit that efficiently transforms FBR into DVR by following a recursive construction based on quantum arithmetic operations, and we compare this approach with methods that directly load DVR matrix elements using quantum read-only memory (QROM). We analyze the quantum resources, including T-gate and qubit counts, required for implementing the DVR unitary and discuss preferable choices of QROM-based and recursive-based methods for a given matrix size and precision. This study lays the groundwork for utilizing DVR Hamiltonians in quantum algorithms such as quantum phase estimation with block encoding.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2504.15841,
title = {Quantum Discrete Variable Representations},
author = {Szymon Pliś and Emil Zak},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.15841},
year = {2025}
}