Seismic Wave Propagation Simulation With Quantum Computing

Abstract Nowadays, the utilization of quantum computing is on the rise, with its applications extending across numerous fields. This new computing paradigm is likely to inject fresh blood into the development of multiple disciplines. For a long time, solving the ill‐conditioned problem in geophysics has been an incredibly challenging topic. Especially when the condition number of linear systems is too large, the solution method of linear equation system based on matrix inversion tends to fail. In this paper, an iterative quantum annealing algorithm is proposed and successfully applied to the solution process of staggered‐grid finite‐difference operators based on dispersion preservation method. Then, the dispersion analysis and forward simulation of the obtained operators are carried out, which verifies that the algorithm yields results close to the classical optimization method. Our experiments verify that the algorithm can effectively deal with the ill‐conditioning of linear systems, and the algorithm is essentially a global optimization algorithm, which is suitable for solving ill‐conditioned problems and ill‐posed problems in geophysics. With the flourishing development of quantum annealer devices, it is expected that this method may be applied in solving large‐scale geophysical inverse problem in the future.