With the advent of useable quantum computers, the university’s new tool will process data far faster than current methods.

Scientists from the University of Glasgow are developing a new way to use quantum computing to identify gravitational wave signals.

A team from the university’s School of Physics & Astronomy have created a quantum algorithm to match gravitational wave signals against a databank of templates.

The algorithm provides a valuable tool for future astrophysicists as it can drastically cut down the time it takes to sort data.

This process, known as matched filtering, is part of the methodology that underpins some of the gravitational wave signal discoveries from detectors like the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory (LIGO) in America and Virgo in Italy.

Those detectors, the most sensitive sensors ever created, are used to pick up the faint ripples in spacetime caused by massive astronomical events like the collision and merger of black holes.

Matched filtering sifts through the data, searching for a signal which matches one out of potentially hundreds of trillions of templates – pieces of pre-created data which are likely to correlate with a genuine gravitational wave signal.

While the process has enabled numerous gravitational wave detections since LIGO picked up its first signal in September 2015, it is time-consuming and resource intensive.

The team from Glasgow University found that the process could be greatly accelerated by a quantum computing technique called Grover’s algorithm.

Developed by computer scientist Lov Grover in 1996, it harnesses the unusual capabilities and applications of quantum theory to make the process of searching through databases much faster.

While quantum computers capable of processing data using Grover’s algorithm are still a developing technology, conventional computers can model their behaviour, allowing researchers to develop techniques which can be adopted when the technology has matured, and quantum computers are readily available.

Dr Scarlett Gao from the University’s School of Physics & Astronomy and one of the lead authors of the research said: “Matched filtering is a problem that Grover’s algorithm seems well-placed to help solve, and we’ve been able to develop a system which shows that quantum computing could have valuable applications in gravitational wave astronomy.

“My co-author and I were PhD students when we began this work, and we’re lucky to have had access to the support of some of the UK’s leading quantum computing and gravitational wave researchers during the process of developing this software.

“While we’ve concentrated on one type of search in this paper, it’s possible that it could also be adapted for other processes which, like this one, don’t require the database to be loaded into quantum random access memory.” (Move this up, maybe?)

The Glasgow team are the first to adapt Grover’s algorithm for the purposes of gravitational wave search. The system they developed can speed-up the number of operations proportional to the square-root of the number of templates.

This reduction in the number of calculations would translate into a speed up in time. In the best case that means that, for example, if a search using classical computing would take a year, the same search could take as little as a week with their quantum algorithm.