Efficient Pauli-decomposition and multistage state-refinement for tensor network based differential equation solver
Classical numerical techniques for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) become computationally expensive as the dimension of the discretized differential operator increases. For PDEs giving rise to Sturm--Liouville problems, tensor network (TN) methods can be highly productive: an operator of dimension $N\times N$ can be represented as a matrix product operator (MPO) using only $n=\log_2(N)$ qubits, enabling computation of eigenvalues and eigenvectors via imaginary time evolution (ITE). However, this remains computationally challenging. First, most methods for generating MPOs of large operators without explicit tensor-product structure require prohibitively large memory. Second, the number of Trotterization steps for convergence in conventional ITE increases rapidly with $n$. We present techniques to mitigate both challenges for certain sparse, structured differential operators. To address the first, we construct the MPO by expanding the operator in the Pauli-string basis, enabled by an analytical expression for the Pauli basis coefficients that reduces the memory requirement from $\mathcal{O}(2^{n+1})$ to $\mathcal{O}(2n)$. To address the second, we propose a multistage state-refinement heuristic that accelerates ITE convergence, reducing convergence time by up to two orders of magnitude. Using this TN framework, we compute the first 32 eigenstates of a Laplacian of dimension exceeding $10^6$ with fidelity above $0.95$ using a 20-qubit MPO. We further validate the method on the 2D anharmonic oscillator and investigate disordered systems, where increasing random potential strength degrades accuracy and limits the approach.