Quantum Lattice Boltzmann Solutions for Transport under 3D Spatially Varying Advection on Trapped Ion Hardware
Running fluid flow simulations on quantum computers with realistic conditions
Researchers demonstrated that quantum computers can simulate how fluids move and mix under varying flow patterns — a step toward realistic fluid dynamics calculations on quantum hardware. Using IonQ's trapped-ion systems, they solved the advection-diffusion equation in three dimensions and identified a major bottleneck: repeatedly reading out and reloading fluid density data. They propose using a technique called MPS shadow tomography to make this process faster at scale.
Quantum computers could eventually simulate complex fluid dynamics far faster than classical computers, with applications in aircraft design, weather prediction, and chemical engineering. This work moves beyond toy problems to conditions closer to what engineers actually need to model. However, the current readout bottleneck would need to be solved before quantum computers could outperform conventional supercomputers for these problems.