AUTHOR=Ray Navamita , Banerjee Tirtha , Nadiga Balu , Karra Satish TITLE=On the Viability of Quantum Annealers to Solve Fluid Flows JOURNAL=Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering VOLUME=8 YEAR=2022 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/mechanical-engineering/articles/10.3389/fmech.2022.906696 DOI=10.3389/fmech.2022.906696 ISSN=2297-3079 ABSTRACT=

This paper explores the suitability of upcoming novel computing technologies, particularly adiabatic annealing based quantum computers, to solve fluid dynamics problems that form a critical component of several science and engineering applications. For our experiments, we start with a well-studied one-dimensional simple flow problem, and provide a framework to convert such problems in continuum to a form amenable for deployment on such quantum annealers. Since the DWave annealer returns multiple states sampling the energy landscape of the problem, we explore multiple solution selection strategies to approximate the solution of the problem. We analyze the continuum solutions obtained both qualitatively and quantitatively as well as their sensitivities to the particular solution selection scheme.