Complexity Blowup for Solutions of the Laplace and the Diffusion Equation

In this paper, we investigate the computational complexity of solutions to the Laplace and the diffusion equation. We show that for a certain class of initial-boundary value problems of the Laplace and the diffusion equation, the solution operator is unbounded as a mapping from the space of polynomial-time computable functions into itself in the sense that there exists polynomial-time (Turing) computable input data such that the solution is not polynomial-time computable, unless $FP=\#P$. In this case, we can, in general, not simulate the solution of the Laplace or the diffusion equation on a digital computer without having a complexity blowup, i.e., the computation time for obtaining an approximation of the solution with up to a finite number of significant digits grows exponentially in the number of digits. This shows that the computational complexity of the solution operator is intrinsically high, independent of the numerical algorithm that is used to obtain a solution. This indicates that there is a fundamental problem in computing a solution on a digital hardware.