Quantum algorithm to find extreme events in intermittent signals

Finding extrema (minimum or maximum) in signals is a critical operation in various applications. Of special importance are intermittent signals, such as those from deep space, earthquake and tsunami activities and turbulent flows around airplanes, in which the extremum occurs in a highly intermittent fashion. The rarity of these abrupt changes, makes their detection and statistical analysis computationally challenging. We propose here, a hybrid, quantum-classical algorithm to efficiently find the extrema in intermittent signals that are encoded as quantum amplitudes, recorded either by a prior quantum sensor or a quantum algorithmic solver. In this work, we use signals from turbulent fluid flows to perform simulations and study the algorithm's performance, complexity and accuracy, revealing the viability of the proposed approach. This work opens a new avenue to extract an end-to-end and near-term quantum advantage in solving problems of practical interest.