(Press-News.org) UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 19:00 GMT / 14:00 ET, WEDNESDAY 29 JANUARY 2025
Quantum-inspired computing drives major advance in simulating turbulence
Researchers at the University of Oxford have pioneered a new approach to simulate turbulent systems, based on probabilities. The findings have been published today (29 January) in the journal Science Advances.
Predicting the dynamics of turbulent fluid flows has long been a central goal for scientists and engineers. Yet, even with modern computing technology, direct and accurate simulation of all but the simplest turbulent flows remains impossible.
This is due to turbulence being characterised by eddies and swirls of various shapes and sizes interacting in chaotic and unpredictable manners. For uses within engineering or weather-prediction, these fluctuations cannot be accurately simulated even by the most powerful supercomputers.
Working with colleagues at Hamburg, Pittsburgh and Cornell, the Oxford researchers reframed the problem in a manner that entirely avoids the need to directly resolve and simulate these turbulent fluctuations. Rather than simulating the troublesome fluctuations directly, they modelled these as random variables distributed according to a probability distribution function. Simulating such probability distributions enabled them to extract all meaningful quantities from the flow (for instance, lift and drag), without having to worry about the chaos of turbulent fluctuations.
Normally, simulating turbulence probability distributions requires solving high-dimensional Fokker-Planck equations – something infeasible to do using classical methods. To overcome this, the team applied a quantum-inspired computing technology developed at the University of Oxford. This method uses 'tensor networks’ to represent the turbulence probability distributions in a hyper-compressed format that enabled their simulation.
In the study, the quantum-inspired computing algorithm running on a single CPU core required just a few hours to compute that which would take an equivalent classical algorithm several days to do on an entire supercomputer.
Yet this computational speedup is only the beginning: in the future, much greater gains are likely to be had by running the quantum-inspired tensor network algorithm on dedicated hardware, such as tensor processing units and fault-tolerant quantum chips.
According to the researchers, the approach not only questions the current limits of turbulence simulation, but also opens the door towards simulating other chaotic systems that can be described probabilistically.
Lead researcher Dr Nikita Gourianov (Department of Physics, University of Oxford) said: “The demonstrated - and future - computational advantage not only opens up new, previously inaccessible areas of turbulence physics for scientific probing, but also beckons next-generation computational fluid dynamics codes. These could end up improving our weather forecasts, make our cars more aerodynamic, increase the efficiency of chemical industries, and more.”
Notes to editors:
For media inquiries and interview requests, contact Dr Nikita Gourianov: nikgourianov@icloud.com
The study ‘Tensor networks enable the calculation of turbulence probability distributions’ will be published in Science Advances at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ads5990 at 19:00 GMT / 14:00 ET on Wednesday 29 January 2025. To view a copy of the paper before this under embargo, access the Science Advances press pack https://www.eurekalert.org/press/vancepak or contact: vancepak@aaas.org
About the University of Oxford:
Oxford University has been placed number 1 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the ninth year running, and number 3 in the QS World Rankings 2024. At the heart of this success are the twin-pillars of our ground-breaking research and innovation and our distinctive educational offer.
Oxford is world-famous for research and teaching excellence and home to some of the most talented people from across the globe. Our work helps the lives of millions, solving real-world problems through a huge network of partnerships and collaborations. The breadth and interdisciplinary nature of our research alongside our personalised approach to teaching sparks imaginative and inventive insights and solutions.
Through its research commercialisation arm, Oxford University Innovation, Oxford is the highest university patent filer in the UK and is ranked first in the UK for university spinouts, having created more than 300 new companies since 1988. Over a third of these companies have been created in the past five years. The university is a catalyst for prosperity in Oxfordshire and the United Kingdom, contributing £15.7 billion to the UK economy in 2018/19, and supports more than 28,000 full time jobs.
The Department of Biology is a University of Oxford department within the Maths, Physical, and Life Sciences Division. It utilises academic strength in a broad range of bioscience disciplines to tackle global challenges such as food security, biodiversity loss, climate change and global pandemics. It also helps to train and equip the biologists of the future through holistic undergraduate and graduate courses. For more information visit www.biology.ox.ac.uk.
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Quantum-inspired computing drives major advance in simulating turbulence
2025-01-29
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