NIST - National Institute of Standards and Technology

08/03/2026 | Press release | Archived content

Quantum Wave Atom Transforms

Published
August 3, 2026

Author(s)

Marianna Podzorova, Yi-Kai Liu

Abstract

This paper constructs the first efficient implementation of a quantum wavelet packet transform with a 'parabolic scaling' tree structure, sometimes called a quantum wave atom transform. Classically, wave atom transforms are used to construct sparse representations of differential operators, which enable fast classical algorithms for solving wave equations. Compared to previous work on quantum wavelet transforms, our quantum algorithm can implement a larger class of wavelet and wave atom transforms, by using an efficient representation for a larger class of possible tree structures. Our quantum implementation has O(poly(n)) gate complexity for applying a transform of dimension 2^n, while classical implementations use O(n 2^n) floating point operations. This is potentially useful for designing quantum algorithms for solving wave equations that achieve an exponential speedup over classical algorithms.
Citation
Quantum Science and Technology
Pub Type
Journals

Keywords

Quantum algorithms, wavelets, wave atoms

Citation

Podzorova, M. and Liu, Y. (2026), Quantum Wave Atom Transforms, Quantum Science and Technology, [online], https://doi.org/10.1088/2058-9565/ae8d50, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=960249 (Accessed August 9, 2026)
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NIST - National Institute of Standards and Technology published this content on August 03, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on August 09, 2026 at 09:13 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]