Efficient quantum algorithm for all quantum wavelet transforms

Abstract

Wavelet transforms are widely used in various fields of science and engineering as a mathematical tool with features that reveal information ignored by the Fourier transform. Unlike the Fourier transform, which is unique, a wavelet transform is specified by a sequence of numbers associated with the type of wavelet used and an order parameter specifying the length of the sequence. While the quantum Fourier transform, a quantum analog of the classical Fourier transform, has been pivotal in quantum computing, prior works on quantum wavelet transforms (QWTs) were limited to the second and fourth order of a particular wavelet, the Daubechies wavelet. Here we develop a simple yet efficient quantum algorithm for executing any wavelet transform on a quantum computer. Our approach is to decompose the kernel matrix of a wavelet transform as a linear combination of unitaries (LCU) that are compilable by easy-to-implement modular quantum arithmetic operations and use the LCU technique to construct a probabilistic procedure to implement a QWT with a known success probability. We then use properties of wavelets to make this approach deterministic by a few executions of the amplitude amplification strategy. We extend our approach to a multilevel wavelet transform and a generalized version, the packet wavelet transform, establishing computational complexities in terms of three parameters: the wavelet order M, the dimension N of the transformation matrix, and the transformation level d. We show the cost is logarithmic in N, linear in d and superlinear in M. Moreover, we show the cost is independent of M for practical applications. Our proposed QWTs could be used in quantum computing algorithms in a similar manner to their well-established counterpart, the quantum Fourier transform.