Nearly optimal polynomial approximations for the quantum singular value transform

Abstract

We introduce polynomial approximations of the even and odd step functions on the interval $[-1,1]$ with simple Chebyshev coefficients, making their numerical implementation straightforward. We derive rigorous error bounds and demonstrate that these polynomials are nearly optimal in the sense that their error deviates from the theoretically optimal error by a multiplicative factor that grows logarithmically with the polynomial order. From these polynomials, we derive related nearly optimal polynomial approximations that can be used to perform quantum phase estimation, linear amplitude amplification, eigenvalue thresholding, and other quantum algorithms using the quantum singular value transform.