Accelerated search for global extrema in structured quantum signals

Abstract

Extreme values of a physical system are rare by definition, yet they can govern some of its most consequential and anomalous behavior. Their sparsity makes them particularly costly to identify in large data sets. Quantum computation offers a potential way to reduce this cost. The challenge is that quantum amplitudes cannot simply be read, copied, compared, or marked using conventional search oracles. Here we introduce an algorithm for searching amplitude-encoded quantum signals that exploits their underlying structure. Through a nonlinear amplitude transformation, the algorithm identifies and certifies a global extremum while exponentially reducing the effective search space for structured signals. We establish a polylogarithmic query complexity in the data size $N$, together with global completeness, efficient classical verification, and a measurable criterion for quantifying exploitable structure. We demonstrate the framework using computational turbulence data. Applied to line cuts of velocity gradients from a $1024^3$ simulation containing more than one billion grid points, the algorithm consistently isolates the extreme tail and reduces the median search space to $O(\log N)$. The clustered structure characteristic of turbulence further accelerates the search. These results establish a direct connection between physical structure and quantum advantage in extreme-value search. For accessibility, the main text emphasizes the central ideas and results, while the theoretical derivations are provided in the Appendices.