Simulation of the Burgers equation by NMR quantum information processing

Abstract

We report on the implementation of Burgers equation as a type-II quantum computation on an NMR quantum information processor. Since the flow field evolving under the Burgers equation develops sharp features over time, this is a better test of liquid state NMR implementations of type-II quantum computers than the previous examples using the diffusion equation. In particular, we show that Fourier approximations used in the encoding step are not the dominant error. Small systematic errors in the collision operator accumulate and swamp all other errors. We propose, and demonstrate, that the accumulation of this error can be avoided to a large extent by replacing the single collision operator with a set of operators with random errors and similar fidelities. Experiments have been implemented on 16 two-qubit sites for eight successive time steps for the Burgers equation.