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May 5

Qudit Designs and Where to Find Them

Unitary t-designs are some of the most versatile tools in quantum information theory. Their applications range from randomized benchmarking and shadow tomography, to more fundamental ones such as emulating quantum chaos and establishing exponential separations between classical and quantum query complexity. While unitary designs originating from a group structure, such as the Clifford group, have proven to be incredibly useful for qubit systems, unfortunately, this is no longer true for qudits. In fact, the classification of finite-group representations rules out the existence of unitary 2-designs for arbitrary qudit dimensions. This severely limits the applicability of standard quantum information primitives when it comes to qudit systems. We overcome these limitations with a three-fold contribution. First, we introduce a general technique to construct families of weighted state t-designs in arbitrary qudit dimensions. These weighted state-designs generalize classical shadow tomography protocol from qubits to qudits. Second, we introduce a Clifford character RB that allows us to benchmark the qudit Clifford group in any dimension, including non-prime-power dimensions. And third, we establish bounds on the quantum circuit complexity of generating approximate unitary-designs from native gates in existing quantum hardware such as high-spin and cavity-QED qudits. Our work further highlights the analogy between spin and optical coherent states by proving that spin-GKP codewords form a state 2-design while spin coherent states do not; in direct analogy with the optical case. This work is structured as a pedagogical and self-contained introduction to unitary designs and their applications to qudit systems.

  • 5 authors
·
Mar 3

A Resource Efficient Quantum Kernel

Quantum processors may enhance machine learning by mapping high-dimensional data onto quantum systems for processing. Conventional feature maps, for encoding data onto a quantum circuit are currently impractical, as the number of entangling gates scales quadratically with the dimension of the dataset and the number of qubits. In this work, we introduce a quantum feature map designed to handle high-dimensional data with a significantly reduced number of qubits and entangling operations. Our approach preserves essential data characteristics while promoting computational efficiency, as evidenced by extensive experiments on benchmark datasets that demonstrate a marked improvement in both accuracy and resource utilization when using our feature map as a kernel for characterization, as compared to state-of-the-art quantum feature maps. Our noisy simulation results, combined with lower resource requirements, highlight our map's ability to function within the constraints of noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices. Through numerical simulations and small-scale implementation on a superconducting circuit quantum computing platform, we demonstrate that our scheme performs on par or better than a set of classical algorithms for classification. While quantum kernels are typically stymied by exponential concentration, our approach is affected with a slower rate with respect to both the number of qubits and features, which allows practical applications to remain within reach. Our findings herald a promising avenue for the practical implementation of quantum machine learning algorithms on near future quantum computing platforms.

  • 4 authors
·
Jul 4, 2025

Quantum Variational Activation Functions Empower Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks

Variational quantum circuits (VQCs) are central to quantum machine learning, while recent progress in Kolmogorov-Arnold networks (KANs) highlights the power of learnable activation functions. We unify these directions by introducing quantum variational activation functions (QVAFs), realized through single-qubit data re-uploading circuits called DatA Re-Uploading ActivatioNs (DARUANs). We show that DARUAN with trainable weights in data pre-processing possesses an exponentially growing frequency spectrum with data repetitions, enabling an exponential reduction in parameter size compared with Fourier-based activations without loss of expressivity. Embedding DARUAN into KANs yields quantum-inspired KANs (QKANs), which retain the interpretability of KANs while improving their parameter efficiency, expressivity, and generalization. We further introduce two novel techniques to enhance scalability, feasibility and computational efficiency, such as layer extension and hybrid QKANs (HQKANs) as drop-in replacements of multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs) for feed-forward networks in large-scale models. We provide theoretical analysis and extensive experiments on function regression, image classification, and autoregressive generative language modeling, demonstrating the efficiency and scalability of QKANs. DARUANs and QKANs offer a promising direction for advancing quantum machine learning on both noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) hardware and classical quantum simulators.

  • 4 authors
·
Sep 17, 2025 2

Classification with Quantum Neural Networks on Near Term Processors

We introduce a quantum neural network, QNN, that can represent labeled data, classical or quantum, and be trained by supervised learning. The quantum circuit consists of a sequence of parameter dependent unitary transformations which acts on an input quantum state. For binary classification a single Pauli operator is measured on a designated readout qubit. The measured output is the quantum neural network's predictor of the binary label of the input state. First we look at classifying classical data sets which consist of n-bit strings with binary labels. The input quantum state is an n-bit computational basis state corresponding to a sample string. We show how to design a circuit made from two qubit unitaries that can correctly represent the label of any Boolean function of n bits. For certain label functions the circuit is exponentially long. We introduce parameter dependent unitaries that can be adapted by supervised learning of labeled data. We study an example of real world data consisting of downsampled images of handwritten digits each of which has been labeled as one of two distinct digits. We show through classical simulation that parameters can be found that allow the QNN to learn to correctly distinguish the two data sets. We then discuss presenting the data as quantum superpositions of computational basis states corresponding to different label values. Here we show through simulation that learning is possible. We consider using our QNN to learn the label of a general quantum state. By example we show that this can be done. Our work is exploratory and relies on the classical simulation of small quantum systems. The QNN proposed here was designed with near-term quantum processors in mind. Therefore it will be possible to run this QNN on a near term gate model quantum computer where its power can be explored beyond what can be explored with simulation.

  • 2 authors
·
Feb 16, 2018

Quantum Transfer Learning for MNIST Classification Using a Hybrid Quantum-Classical Approach

In this research, we explore the integration of quantum computing with classical machine learning for image classification tasks, specifically focusing on the MNIST dataset. We propose a hybrid quantum-classical approach that leverages the strengths of both paradigms. The process begins with preprocessing the MNIST dataset, normalizing the pixel values, and reshaping the images into vectors. An autoencoder compresses these 784-dimensional vectors into a 64-dimensional latent space, effectively reducing the data's dimensionality while preserving essential features. These compressed features are then processed using a quantum circuit implemented on a 5-qubit system. The quantum circuit applies rotation gates based on the feature values, followed by Hadamard and CNOT gates to entangle the qubits, and measurements are taken to generate quantum outcomes. These outcomes serve as input for a classical neural network designed to classify the MNIST digits. The classical neural network comprises multiple dense layers with batch normalization and dropout to enhance generalization and performance. We evaluate the performance of this hybrid model and compare it with a purely classical approach. The experimental results indicate that while the hybrid model demonstrates the feasibility of integrating quantum computing with classical techniques, the accuracy of the final model, trained on quantum outcomes, is currently lower than the classical model trained on compressed features. This research highlights the potential of quantum computing in machine learning, though further optimization and advanced quantum algorithms are necessary to achieve superior performance.

  • 1 authors
·
Aug 5, 2024

Evaluating the Performance of Some Local Optimizers for Variational Quantum Classifiers

In this paper, we have studied the performance and role of local optimizers in quantum variational circuits. We studied the performance of the two most popular optimizers and compared their results with some popular classical machine learning algorithms. The classical algorithms we used in our study are support vector machine (SVM), gradient boosting (GB), and random forest (RF). These were compared with a variational quantum classifier (VQC) using two sets of local optimizers viz AQGD and COBYLA. For experimenting with VQC, IBM Quantum Experience and IBM Qiskit was used while for classical machine learning models, sci-kit learn was used. The results show that machine learning on noisy immediate scale quantum machines can produce comparable results as on classical machines. For our experiments, we have used a popular restaurant sentiment analysis dataset. The extracted features from this dataset and then after applying PCA reduced the feature set into 5 features. Quantum ML models were trained using 100 epochs and 150 epochs on using EfficientSU2 variational circuit. Overall, four Quantum ML models were trained and three Classical ML models were trained. The performance of the trained models was evaluated using standard evaluation measures viz, Accuracy, Precision, Recall, F-Score. In all the cases AQGD optimizer-based model with 100 Epochs performed better than all other models. It produced an accuracy of 77% and an F-Score of 0.785 which were highest across all the trained models.

  • 3 authors
·
Feb 17, 2021

Amplitude Encoding of Slater-Type Orbitals via Matrix Product States: Efficient State Preparation and Integral Evaluation on Quantum Hardware

Slater-type orbitals (STOs) provide the physically correct description of atomic wavefunctions but have been largely replaced by Gaussian-type orbitals in computational chemistry due to the lack of closed-form multi-center integrals. We present a systematic study of amplitude encoding of STOs on quantum computers using matrix product states (MPS). For one-dimensional orbital functions of the form p_d(x) e^{-ζx}, we derive analytical MPS constructions with constant bond dimension χ= d + 1, requiring O(n) classical and quantum resources for n-qubit registers with no grid sampling. We demonstrate a complete one-electron integral pipeline -- overlap, kinetic energy, and nuclear attraction -- in one dimension, validating the overlap and kinetic energy on IBM Heron processors at 5~qubits with 0.67\% hardware-induced error using Zero-Noise Extrapolation. In three dimensions, we compute multi-center overlap integrals between 1s and 2s orbitals in Cartesian coordinates with 0.02\% discretization error at 18~qubits. A systematic entanglement analysis reveals that the MPS bond dimension of three-dimensional STOs in Cartesian coordinates saturates with increasing grid resolution -- reaching sim138 for the hydrogen 1s orbital at 12~qubits per coordinate -- establishing bounded encoding complexity rather than the exponential scaling initially expected. The SVD truncation threshold provides a practical resource parameter, reducing the bond dimension to 39 at threshold 10^{-6} with negligible accuracy loss. These results map the entanglement landscape for amplitude encoding of atomic orbitals and establish MPS-based state preparation as a viable path toward exact STO basis sets on quantum computers.

  • 1 authors
·
Apr 28

C2|Q>: A Robust Framework for Bridging Classical and Quantum Software Development

QSE is emerging as a critical discipline to make quantum computing accessible to a broader developer community; however, most quantum development environments still require developers to engage with low-level details across the software stack - including problem encoding, circuit construction, algorithm configuration, hardware selection, and result interpretation - making them difficult for classical software engineers to use. To bridge this gap, we present C2|Q>, a hardware-agnostic quantum software development framework that translates specific types of classical specifications into quantum-executable programs while preserving methodological rigor. The framework applies modular SE principles by classifying the workflow into three core modules: an encoder that classifies problems, produces Quantum-Compatible Formats, and constructs quantum circuits, a deployment module that generates circuits and recommends hardware based on fidelity, runtime, and cost, and a decoder that interprets quantum outputs into classical solutions. In evaluation, the encoder module achieved a 93.8% completion rate, the hardware recommendation module consistently selected the appropriate quantum devices for workloads scaling up to 56 qubits. End-to-end experiments on 434 Python programs and 100 JSON problem instances show that the full C2|Q> workflow executes reliably on simulators and can be deployed successfully on representative real quantum hardware, with empirical runs limited to small- and medium-sized instances consistent with current NISQ capabilities. These results indicate that C2|Q> lowers the entry barrier to quantum software development by providing a reproducible, extensible toolchain that connects classical specifications to quantum execution. The open-source implementation of C2|Q> is available at https://github.com/C2-Q/C2Q and as a Python package at https://pypi.org/project/c2q-framework/.

  • 7 authors
·
Oct 3, 2025

Approximate Quantum Compiling for Quantum Simulation: A Tensor Network based approach

We introduce AQCtensor, a novel algorithm to produce short-depth quantum circuits from Matrix Product States (MPS). Our approach is specifically tailored to the preparation of quantum states generated from the time evolution of quantum many-body Hamiltonians. This tailored approach has two clear advantages over previous algorithms that were designed to map a generic MPS to a quantum circuit. First, we optimize all parameters of a parametric circuit at once using Approximate Quantum Compiling (AQC) - this is to be contrasted with other approaches based on locally optimizing a subset of circuit parameters and "sweeping" across the system. We introduce an optimization scheme to avoid the so-called ``orthogonality catastrophe" - i.e. the fact that the fidelity of two arbitrary quantum states decays exponentially with the number of qubits - that would otherwise render a global optimization of the circuit impractical. Second, the depth of our parametric circuit is constant in the number of qubits for a fixed simulation time and fixed error tolerance. This is to be contrasted with the linear circuit Ansatz used in generic algorithms whose depth scales linearly in the number of qubits. For simulation problems on 100 qubits, we show that AQCtensor thus achieves at least an order of magnitude reduction in the depth of the resulting optimized circuit, as compared with the best generic MPS to quantum circuit algorithms. We demonstrate our approach on simulation problems on Heisenberg-like Hamiltonians on up to 100 qubits and find optimized quantum circuits that have significantly reduced depth as compared to standard Trotterized circuits.

  • 4 authors
·
Jan 20, 2023

Quantum Visual Fields with Neural Amplitude Encoding

Quantum Implicit Neural Representations (QINRs) include components for learning and execution on gate-based quantum computers. While QINRs recently emerged as a promising new paradigm, many challenges concerning their architecture and ansatz design, the utility of quantum-mechanical properties, training efficiency and the interplay with classical modules remain. This paper advances the field by introducing a new type of QINR for 2D image and 3D geometric field learning, which we collectively refer to as Quantum Visual Field (QVF). QVF encodes classical data into quantum statevectors using neural amplitude encoding grounded in a learnable energy manifold, ensuring meaningful Hilbert space embeddings. Our ansatz follows a fully entangled design of learnable parametrised quantum circuits, with quantum (unitary) operations performed in the real Hilbert space, resulting in numerically stable training with fast convergence. QVF does not rely on classical post-processing -- in contrast to the previous QINR learning approach -- and directly employs projective measurement to extract learned signals encoded in the ansatz. Experiments on a quantum hardware simulator demonstrate that QVF outperforms the existing quantum approach and widely used classical foundational baselines in terms of visual representation accuracy across various metrics and model characteristics, such as learning of high-frequency details. We also show applications of QVF in 2D and 3D field completion and 3D shape interpolation, highlighting its practical potential.

  • 3 authors
·
Aug 14, 2025

The probabilistic world

Physics is based on probabilities as fundamental entities of a mathematical description. Expectation values of observables are computed according to the classical statistical rule. The overall probability distribution for one world covers all times. The quantum formalism arises once one focuses on the evolution of the time-local probabilistic information. Wave functions or the density matrix allow the formulation of a general linear evolution law for classical statistics. The quantum formalism for classical statistics is a powerful tool which allows us to implement for generalized Ising models the momentum observable with the associated Fourier representation. The association of operators to observables permits the computation of expectation values in terms of the density matrix by the usual quantum rule. We show that probabilistic cellular automata are quantum systems in a formulation with discrete time steps and real wave functions. With a complex structure the evolution operator for automata can be expressed in terms of a Hamiltonian involving fermionic creation and annihilation operators. The time-local probabilistic information amounts to a subsystem of the overall probabilistic system which is correlated with its environment consisting of the past and future. Such subsystems typically involve probabilistic observables for which only a probability distribution for their possible measurement values is available. Incomplete statistics does not permit to compute classical correlation functions for arbitrary subsystem-observables. Bell's inequalities are not generally applicable.

  • 1 authors
·
Nov 4, 2020

Minimal evolution times for fast, pulse-based state preparation in silicon spin qubits

Standing as one of the most significant barriers to reaching quantum advantage, state-preparation fidelities on noisy intermediate-scale quantum processors suffer from quantum-gate errors, which accumulate over time. A potential remedy is pulse-based state preparation. We numerically investigate the minimal evolution times (METs) attainable by optimizing (microwave and exchange) pulses on silicon hardware. We investigate two state preparation tasks. First, we consider the preparation of molecular ground states and find the METs for H_2, HeH^+, and LiH to be 2.4 ns, 4.4 ns, and 27.2 ns, respectively. Second, we consider transitions between arbitrary states and find the METs for transitions between arbitrary four-qubit states to be below 50 ns. For comparison, connecting arbitrary two-qubit states via one- and two-qubit gates on the same silicon processor requires approximately 200 ns. This comparison indicates that pulse-based state preparation is likely to utilize the coherence times of silicon hardware more efficiently than gate-based state preparation. Finally, we quantify the effect of silicon device parameters on the MET. We show that increasing the maximal exchange amplitude from 10 MHz to 1 GHz accelerates the METs, e.g., for H_2 from 84.3 ns to 2.4 ns. This demonstrates the importance of fast exchange. We also show that increasing the maximal amplitude of the microwave drive from 884 kHz to 56.6 MHz shortens state transitions, e.g., for two-qubit states from 1000 ns to 25 ns. Our results bound both the state-preparation times for general quantum algorithms and the execution times of variational quantum algorithms with silicon spin qubits.

  • 8 authors
·
Jun 16, 2024

Quantum Architecture Search with Unsupervised Representation Learning

Unsupervised representation learning presents new opportunities for advancing Quantum Architecture Search (QAS) on Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices. QAS is designed to optimize quantum circuits for Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs). Most QAS algorithms tightly couple the search space and search algorithm, typically requiring the evaluation of numerous quantum circuits, resulting in high computational costs and limiting scalability to larger quantum circuits. Predictor-based QAS algorithms mitigate this issue by estimating circuit performance based on structure or embedding. However, these methods often demand time-intensive labeling to optimize gate parameters across many circuits, which is crucial for training accurate predictors. Inspired by the classical neural architecture search algorithm Arch2vec, we investigate the potential of unsupervised representation learning for QAS without relying on predictors. Our framework decouples unsupervised architecture representation learning from the search process, enabling the learned representations to be applied across various downstream tasks. Additionally, it integrates an improved quantum circuit graph encoding scheme, addressing the limitations of existing representations and enhancing search efficiency. This predictor-free approach removes the need for large labeled datasets. During the search, we employ REINFORCE and Bayesian Optimization to explore the latent representation space and compare their performance against baseline methods. Our results demonstrate that the framework efficiently identifies high-performing quantum circuits with fewer search iterations.

  • 4 authors
·
Jan 21, 2024

Artificial Entanglement in the Fine-Tuning of Large Language Models

Large language models (LLMs) can be adapted to new tasks using parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) methods that modify only a small number of trainable parameters, often through low-rank updates. In this work, we adopt a quantum-information-inspired perspective to understand their effectiveness. From this perspective, low-rank parameterizations naturally correspond to low-dimensional Matrix Product States (MPS) representations, which enable entanglement-based characterizations of parameter structure. Thereby, we term and measure "Artificial Entanglement", defined as the entanglement entropy of the parameters in artificial neural networks (in particular the LLMs). We first study the representative low-rank adaptation (LoRA) PEFT method, alongside full fine-tuning (FFT), using LLaMA models at the 1B and 8B scales trained on the Tulu3 and OpenThoughts3 datasets, and uncover: (i) Internal artificial entanglement in the updates of query and value projection matrices in LoRA follows a volume law with a central suppression (termed as the "Entanglement Valley"), which is sensitive to hyper-parameters and is distinct from that in FFT; (ii) External artificial entanglement in attention matrices, corresponding to token-token correlations in representation space, follows an area law with logarithmic corrections and remains robust to LoRA hyper-parameters and training steps. Drawing a parallel to the No-Hair Theorem in black hole physics, we propose that although LoRA and FFT induce distinct internal entanglement signatures, such differences do not manifest in the attention outputs, suggesting a "no-hair" property that results in the effectiveness of low rank updates. We further provide theoretical support based on random matrix theory, and extend our analysis to an MPS Adaptation PEFT method, which exhibits qualitatively similar behaviors.

  • 6 authors
·
Jan 11 2

Efficient and practical quantum compiler towards multi-qubit systems with deep reinforcement learning

Efficient quantum compiling tactics greatly enhance the capability of quantum computers to execute complicated quantum algorithms. Due to its fundamental importance, a plethora of quantum compilers has been designed in past years. However, there are several caveats to current protocols, which are low optimality, high inference time, limited scalability, and lack of universality. To compensate for these defects, here we devise an efficient and practical quantum compiler assisted by advanced deep reinforcement learning (RL) techniques, i.e., data generation, deep Q-learning, and AQ* search. In this way, our protocol is compatible with various quantum machines and can be used to compile multi-qubit operators. We systematically evaluate the performance of our proposal in compiling quantum operators with both inverse-closed and inverse-free universal basis sets. In the task of single-qubit operator compiling, our proposal outperforms other RL-based quantum compilers in the measure of compiling sequence length and inference time. Meanwhile, the output solution is near-optimal, guaranteed by the Solovay-Kitaev theorem. Notably, for the inverse-free universal basis set, the achieved sequence length complexity is comparable with the inverse-based setting and dramatically advances previous methods. These empirical results contribute to improving the inverse-free Solovay-Kitaev theorem. In addition, for the first time, we demonstrate how to leverage RL-based quantum compilers to accomplish two-qubit operator compiling. The achieved results open an avenue for integrating RL with quantum compiling to unify efficiency and practicality and thus facilitate the exploration of quantum advantages.

  • 6 authors
·
Apr 14, 2022

Synergy Between Quantum Circuits and Tensor Networks: Short-cutting the Race to Practical Quantum Advantage

While recent breakthroughs have proven the ability of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices to achieve quantum advantage in classically-intractable sampling tasks, the use of these devices for solving more practically relevant computational problems remains a challenge. Proposals for attaining practical quantum advantage typically involve parametrized quantum circuits (PQCs), whose parameters can be optimized to find solutions to diverse problems throughout quantum simulation and machine learning. However, training PQCs for real-world problems remains a significant practical challenge, largely due to the phenomenon of barren plateaus in the optimization landscapes of randomly-initialized quantum circuits. In this work, we introduce a scalable procedure for harnessing classical computing resources to provide pre-optimized initializations for PQCs, which we show significantly improves the trainability and performance of PQCs on a variety of problems. Given a specific optimization task, this method first utilizes tensor network (TN) simulations to identify a promising quantum state, which is then converted into gate parameters of a PQC by means of a high-performance decomposition procedure. We show that this learned initialization avoids barren plateaus, and effectively translates increases in classical resources to enhanced performance and speed in training quantum circuits. By demonstrating a means of boosting limited quantum resources using classical computers, our approach illustrates the promise of this synergy between quantum and quantum-inspired models in quantum computing, and opens up new avenues to harness the power of modern quantum hardware for realizing practical quantum advantage.

  • 6 authors
·
Aug 29, 2022

QuXAI: Explainers for Hybrid Quantum Machine Learning Models

The emergence of hybrid quantum-classical machine learning (HQML) models opens new horizons of computational intelligence but their fundamental complexity frequently leads to black box behavior that undermines transparency and reliability in their application. Although XAI for quantum systems still in its infancy, a major research gap is evident in robust global and local explainability approaches that are designed for HQML architectures that employ quantized feature encoding followed by classical learning. The gap is the focus of this work, which introduces QuXAI, an framework based upon Q-MEDLEY, an explainer for explaining feature importance in these hybrid systems. Our model entails the creation of HQML models incorporating quantum feature maps, the use of Q-MEDLEY, which combines feature based inferences, preserving the quantum transformation stage and visualizing the resulting attributions. Our result shows that Q-MEDLEY delineates influential classical aspects in HQML models, as well as separates their noise, and competes well against established XAI techniques in classical validation settings. Ablation studies more significantly expose the virtues of the composite structure used in Q-MEDLEY. The implications of this work are critically important, as it provides a route to improve the interpretability and reliability of HQML models, thus promoting greater confidence and being able to engage in safer and more responsible use of quantum-enhanced AI technology.

  • 6 authors
·
May 15, 2025 3

1d-qt-ideal-solver: 1D Idealized Quantum Tunneling Solver with Absorbing Boundaries

We present 1d-qt-ideal-solver, an open-source Python library for simulating one-dimensional quantum tunneling dynamics under idealized coherent conditions. The solver implements the split-operator method with second-order Trotter-Suzuki factorization, utilizing FFT-based spectral differentiation for the kinetic operator and complex absorbing potentials to eliminate boundary reflections. Numba just-in-time compilation achieves performance comparable to compiled languages while maintaining code accessibility. We validate the implementation through two canonical test cases: rectangular barriers modeling field emission through oxide layers and Gaussian barriers approximating scanning tunneling microscopy interactions. Both simulations achieve exceptional numerical fidelity with machine-precision energy conservation over femtosecond-scale propagation. Comparative analysis employing information-theoretic measures and nonparametric hypothesis tests reveals that rectangular barriers exhibit moderately higher transmission coefficients than Gaussian barriers in the over-barrier regime, though Jensen-Shannon divergence analysis indicates modest practical differences between geometries. Phase space analysis confirms complete decoherence when averaged over spatial-temporal domains. The library name reflects its scope: idealized signifies deliberate exclusion of dissipation, environmental coupling, and many-body interactions, limiting applicability to qualitative insights and pedagogical purposes rather than quantitative experimental predictions. Distributed under the MIT License, the library provides a deployable tool for teaching quantum mechanics and preliminary exploration of tunneling dynamics.

  • 5 authors
·
Dec 27, 2025

Efficient Magic State Cultivation on RP^2

Preparing high-fidelity logical magic states is crucial for fault-tolerant quantum computation. Among prior attempts to reduce the substantial cost of magic state preparation, magic state cultivation (MSC), a recently proposed protocol for preparing T states without magic state distillation, achieves state-of-the-art efficiency. Inspired by this work, we propose a new MSC procedure that would produce a logical T state on a rotated surface code at a further reduced cost. For our MSC protocol, we define a new code family, the RP^2 code, by putting the rotated surface code on RP^2 (a two-dimensional manifold), as well as two self-dual CSS codes named SRP-3 and SRP-5 respectively. Small RP^2 codes are used to hold logical information and checked by syndrome extraction (SE) circuits. We design fast morphing circuits that enable switching between a distance 3 (5) RP^2 code and an SRP-3 (SRP-5) code on which we can efficiently check the correctness of the logical state. To preserve the high accuracy of the cultivated logical T state, we design an efficient and easy-to-decode expansion stage that grows a small RP^2 code to a large rotated surface code in one round. Our MSC protocol utilizes non-local connectivity, available on both neutral atom array and ion trap platforms. According to our Monte Carlo sampling results, our MSC protocol requires about an order of magnitude smaller space-time volume to reach a target logical error rate around 10^{-9} compared to the original MSC protocol.

  • 4 authors
·
Mar 24, 2025

Ground State Preparation via Dynamical Cooling

Quantum algorithms for probing ground-state properties of quantum systems require good initial states. Projection-based methods such as eigenvalue filtering rely on inputs that have a significant overlap with the low-energy subspace, which can be challenging for large, strongly-correlated systems. This issue has motivated the study of physically-inspired dynamical approaches such as thermodynamic cooling. In this work, we introduce a ground-state preparation algorithm based on the simulation of quantum dynamics. Our main insight is to transform the Hamiltonian by a shifted sign function via quantum signal processing, effectively mapping eigenvalues into positive and negative subspaces separated by a large gap. This automatically ensures that all states within each subspace conserve energy with respect to the transformed Hamiltonian. Subsequent time-evolution with a perturbed Hamiltonian induces transitions to lower-energy states while preventing unwanted jumps to higher energy states. The approach does not rely on a priori knowledge of energy gaps and requires no additional qubits to model a bath. Furthermore, it makes mathcal{O}(d^{,3/2}/epsilon) queries to the time-evolution operator of the system and mathcal{O}(d^{,3/2}) queries to a block-encoding of the perturbation, for d cooling steps and an epsilon-accurate energy resolution. Our results provide a framework for combining quantum signal processing and Hamiltonian simulation to design heuristic quantum algorithms for ground-state preparation.

  • 4 authors
·
Apr 8, 2024

Curriculum reinforcement learning for quantum architecture search under hardware errors

The key challenge in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era is finding useful circuits compatible with current device limitations. Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) offer a potential solution by fixing the circuit architecture and optimizing individual gate parameters in an external loop. However, parameter optimization can become intractable, and the overall performance of the algorithm depends heavily on the initially chosen circuit architecture. Several quantum architecture search (QAS) algorithms have been developed to design useful circuit architectures automatically. In the case of parameter optimization alone, noise effects have been observed to dramatically influence the performance of the optimizer and final outcomes, which is a key line of study. However, the effects of noise on the architecture search, which could be just as critical, are poorly understood. This work addresses this gap by introducing a curriculum-based reinforcement learning QAS (CRLQAS) algorithm designed to tackle challenges in realistic VQA deployment. The algorithm incorporates (i) a 3D architecture encoding and restrictions on environment dynamics to explore the search space of possible circuits efficiently, (ii) an episode halting scheme to steer the agent to find shorter circuits, and (iii) a novel variant of simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation as an optimizer for faster convergence. To facilitate studies, we developed an optimized simulator for our algorithm, significantly improving computational efficiency in simulating noisy quantum circuits by employing the Pauli-transfer matrix formalism in the Pauli-Liouville basis. Numerical experiments focusing on quantum chemistry tasks demonstrate that CRLQAS outperforms existing QAS algorithms across several metrics in both noiseless and noisy environments.

  • 6 authors
·
Feb 5, 2024

All elementary functions from a single binary operator

A single two-input gate suffices for all of Boolean logic in digital hardware. No comparable primitive has been known for continuous mathematics: computing elementary functions such as sin, cos, sqrt, and log has always required multiple distinct operations. Here I show that a single binary operator, eml(x,y)=exp(x)-ln(y), together with the constant 1, generates the standard repertoire of a scientific calculator. This includes constants such as e, pi, and i; arithmetic operations including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponentiation as well as the usual transcendental and algebraic functions. For example, exp(x)=eml(x,1), ln(x)=eml(1,eml(eml(1,x),1)), and likewise for all other operations. That such an operator exists was not anticipated; I found it by systematic exhaustive search and established constructively that it suffices for the concrete scientific-calculator basis. In EML (Exp-Minus-Log) form, every such expression becomes a binary tree of identical nodes, yielding a grammar as simple as S -> 1 | eml(S,S). This uniform structure also enables gradient-based symbolic regression: using EML trees as trainable circuits with standard optimizers (Adam), I demonstrate the feasibility of exact recovery of closed-form elementary functions from numerical data at shallow tree depths up to 4. The same architecture can fit arbitrary data, but when the generating law is elementary, it may recover the exact formula.

  • 1 authors
·
Apr 3

Foundations for Near-Term Quantum Natural Language Processing

We provide conceptual and mathematical foundations for near-term quantum natural language processing (QNLP), and do so in quantum computer scientist friendly terms. We opted for an expository presentation style, and provide references for supporting empirical evidence and formal statements concerning mathematical generality. We recall how the quantum model for natural language that we employ canonically combines linguistic meanings with rich linguistic structure, most notably grammar. In particular, the fact that it takes a quantum-like model to combine meaning and structure, establishes QNLP as quantum-native, on par with simulation of quantum systems. Moreover, the now leading Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) paradigm for encoding classical data on quantum hardware, variational quantum circuits, makes NISQ exceptionally QNLP-friendly: linguistic structure can be encoded as a free lunch, in contrast to the apparently exponentially expensive classical encoding of grammar. Quantum speed-up for QNLP tasks has already been established in previous work with Will Zeng. Here we provide a broader range of tasks which all enjoy the same advantage. Diagrammatic reasoning is at the heart of QNLP. Firstly, the quantum model interprets language as quantum processes via the diagrammatic formalism of categorical quantum mechanics. Secondly, these diagrams are via ZX-calculus translated into quantum circuits. Parameterisations of meanings then become the circuit variables to be learned. Our encoding of linguistic structure within quantum circuits also embodies a novel approach for establishing word-meanings that goes beyond the current standards in mainstream AI, by placing linguistic structure at the heart of Wittgenstein's meaning-is-context.

  • 4 authors
·
Dec 7, 2020

One-shot manipulation of coherence in dynamic quantum resource theory

A fundamental problem in quantum information is to understand the operational significance of quantum resources. Quantum resource theories (QRTs) provide a powerful theoretical framework that aids in analyzing and comprehending the operational meaning of these resources. Early resource theories primarily focused on analyzing static quantum resources. Recently, there has been growing interest in the study of dynamic quantum resources. In this paper, we utilize superchannel theory to describe the dynamic resource theory of quantum coherence. In this dynamic resource theory, we treat classical channels as free channels and consider two classes of free superchannels that preserve channel incoherence (maximally incoherent superchannels (MISC) and dephasing-covariant incoherent superchannels (DISC)) as free resources. We regard the quantum Fourier transform as the golden unit of dynamic coherence resources. We first establish the one-shot theory of dynamic coherence cost and dynamic coherence distillation, which involves converting the quantum Fourier transform into an arbitrary quantum channel using MISC and DISC. Next, we introduce a class of free superchannels known as δ-MISC, which asymptotically generate negligible dynamic coherence. Finally, we provide upper and lower bounds for the one-shot catalytic dynamic coherence cost of quantum channels under the action of these δ-MISC superchannels.

  • 1 authors
·
Feb 13, 2025

Supervised learning with quantum enhanced feature spaces

Machine learning and quantum computing are two technologies each with the potential for altering how computation is performed to address previously untenable problems. Kernel methods for machine learning are ubiquitous for pattern recognition, with support vector machines (SVMs) being the most well-known method for classification problems. However, there are limitations to the successful solution to such problems when the feature space becomes large, and the kernel functions become computationally expensive to estimate. A core element to computational speed-ups afforded by quantum algorithms is the exploitation of an exponentially large quantum state space through controllable entanglement and interference. Here, we propose and experimentally implement two novel methods on a superconducting processor. Both methods represent the feature space of a classification problem by a quantum state, taking advantage of the large dimensionality of quantum Hilbert space to obtain an enhanced solution. One method, the quantum variational classifier builds on [1,2] and operates through using a variational quantum circuit to classify a training set in direct analogy to conventional SVMs. In the second, a quantum kernel estimator, we estimate the kernel function and optimize the classifier directly. The two methods present a new class of tools for exploring the applications of noisy intermediate scale quantum computers [3] to machine learning.

  • 7 authors
·
Apr 30, 2018

Less Quantum, More Advantage: An End-to-End Quantum Algorithm for the Jones Polynomial

We present an end-to-end reconfigurable algorithmic pipeline for solving a famous problem in knot theory using a noisy digital quantum computer, namely computing the value of the Jones polynomial at the fifth root of unity within additive error for any input link, i.e. a closed braid. This problem is DQC1-complete for Markov-closed braids and BQP-complete for Plat-closed braids, and we accommodate both versions of the problem. Even though it is widely believed that DQC1 is strictly contained in BQP, and so is 'less quantum', the resource requirements of classical algorithms for the DQC1 version are at least as high as for the BQP version, and so we potentially gain 'more advantage' by focusing on Markov-closed braids in our exposition. We demonstrate our quantum algorithm on Quantinuum's H2-2 quantum computer and show the effect of problem-tailored error-mitigation techniques. Further, leveraging that the Jones polynomial is a link invariant, we construct an efficiently verifiable benchmark to characterise the effect of noise present in a given quantum processor. In parallel, we implement and benchmark the state-of-the-art tensor-network-based classical algorithms for computing the Jones polynomial. The practical tools provided in this work allow for precise resource estimation to identify near-term quantum advantage for a meaningful quantum-native problem in knot theory.

  • 9 authors
·
Mar 7, 2025

Practical Benchmarking of Randomized Measurement Methods for Quantum Chemistry Hamiltonians

Many hybrid quantum-classical algorithms for the application of ground state energy estimation in quantum chemistry involve estimating the expectation value of a molecular Hamiltonian with respect to a quantum state through measurements on a quantum device. To guide the selection of measurement methods designed for this observable estimation problem, we propose a benchmark called CSHOREBench (Common States and Hamiltonians for ObseRvable Estimation Benchmark) that assesses the performance of these methods against a set of common molecular Hamiltonians and common states encountered during the runtime of hybrid quantum-classical algorithms. In CSHOREBench, we account for resource utilization of a quantum computer through measurements of a prepared state, and a classical computer through computational runtime spent in proposing measurements and classical post-processing of acquired measurement outcomes. We apply CSHOREBench considering a variety of measurement methods on Hamiltonians of size up to 16 qubits. Our discussion is aided by using the framework of decision diagrams which provides an efficient data structure for various randomized methods and illustrate how to derandomize distributions on decision diagrams. In numerical simulations, we find that the methods of decision diagrams and derandomization are the most preferable. In experiments on IBM quantum devices against small molecules, we observe that decision diagrams reduces the number of measurements made by classical shadows by more than 80%, that made by locally biased classical shadows by around 57%, and consistently require fewer quantum measurements along with lower classical computational runtime than derandomization. Furthermore, CSHOREBench is empirically efficient to run when considering states of random quantum ansatz with fixed depth.

  • 7 authors
·
Dec 12, 2023

KetGPT - Dataset Augmentation of Quantum Circuits using Transformers

Quantum algorithms, represented as quantum circuits, can be used as benchmarks for assessing the performance of quantum systems. Existing datasets, widely utilized in the field, suffer from limitations in size and versatility, leading researchers to employ randomly generated circuits. Random circuits are, however, not representative benchmarks as they lack the inherent properties of real quantum algorithms for which the quantum systems are manufactured. This shortage of `useful' quantum benchmarks poses a challenge to advancing the development and comparison of quantum compilers and hardware. This research aims to enhance the existing quantum circuit datasets by generating what we refer to as `realistic-looking' circuits by employing the Transformer machine learning architecture. For this purpose, we introduce KetGPT, a tool that generates synthetic circuits in OpenQASM language, whose structure is based on quantum circuits derived from existing quantum algorithms and follows the typical patterns of human-written algorithm-based code (e.g., order of gates and qubits). Our three-fold verification process, involving manual inspection and Qiskit framework execution, transformer-based classification, and structural analysis, demonstrates the efficacy of KetGPT in producing large amounts of additional circuits that closely align with algorithm-based structures. Beyond benchmarking, we envision KetGPT contributing substantially to AI-driven quantum compilers and systems.

  • 4 authors
·
Feb 20, 2024

Fine-Tuning Large Language Models on Quantum Optimization Problems for Circuit Generation

Large language models (LLM) have achieved remarkable outcomes in addressing complex problems, including math, coding, and analyzing large amounts of scientific reports. Yet few works have explored the potential of LLM in quantum computing. The most challenging problem is how to leverage LLMs to automatically generate quantum circuits at a large scale. In this paper, we address such a challenge by fine-tuning LLMs and injecting the domain-specific knowledge of quantum computing. In particular, we investigate the mechanisms to generate training data sets and construct the end-to-end pipeline to fine-tune pre-trained LLMs that produce parameterized quantum circuits for optimization problems. We have prepared 14,000 quantum circuits covering a substantial part of the quantum optimization landscape: 12 optimization problem instances and their optimized QAOA, VQE, and adaptive VQE circuits. The fine-tuned LLMs can construct syntactically correct parametrized quantum circuits in the most recent OpenQASM 3.0. We have evaluated the quality of the parameters by comparing them to the optimized expectation values and distributions. Our evaluation shows that the fine-tuned LLM outperforms state-of-the-art models and that the parameters are better than random. The LLM-generated parametrized circuits and initial parameters can be used as a starting point for further optimization, e.g., templates in quantum machine learning and the benchmark for compilers and hardware.

  • 4 authors
·
Apr 15, 2025

On the Complementarity of Quantum and Classical Features: Adaptive Hybrid Quantum-Classical Feature Fusion for Breast Cancer Classification

The integration of quantum machine learning with classical deep learning offers promising avenues for medical image analysis by mapping data into high-dimensional Hilbert spaces. However, effectively unifying these distinct paradigms remains challenging due to common optimization asymmetries. In this paper, a novel hybrid quantum-classical architecture for breast cancer diagnosis based on a dual-branch feature-extraction pipeline is proposed. Our framework extracts and unifies complementary representations from classical models and quantum circuits, exploring both trainable and deterministic (non-trainable) quantum paradigms. To integrate these embeddings, three progressive feature fusion strategies are introduced: Static Hybrid Fusion (SHF) for offline extraction, Dynamic Hybrid Fusion (DHF) for end-to-end co-adaptation, and a novel Temperature-Scaled Hybrid Fusion (TSHF). The TSHF strategy incorporates a learnable scalar, inspired by multimodal learning, that dynamically balances hybrid gradient dynamics and resolves optimization bottlenecks. Empirical validation on the BreastMNIST dataset confirms our hypothesis that unifying diverse feature representations creates a richer data context. The TSHF strategy, specifically when pairing a ResNet backbone with a trainable quantum circuit, achieved a peak accuracy of 87.82%, F1-score of 91.77%, and an AUC-ROC of 89.08%, outperforming purely classical baselines. These results demonstrate that the proposed hybrid framework improves classification accuracy and threshold reliability, providing a stable, high-performance architecture for the clinical deployment of quantum-enhanced diagnostic tools.

  • 3 authors
·
Apr 23

Adaptive Graph Shrinking for Quantum Optimization of Constrained Combinatorial Problems

A range of quantum algorithms, especially those leveraging variational parameterization and circuit-based optimization, are being studied as alternatives for solving classically intractable combinatorial optimization problems (COPs). However, their applicability is limited by hardware constraints, including shallow circuit depth, limited qubit counts, and noise. To mitigate these issues, we propose a hybrid classical--quantum framework based on graph shrinking to reduce the number of variables and constraints in QUBO formulations of COPs, while preserving problem structure. Our approach introduces three key ideas: (i) constraint-aware shrinking that prevents merges that will likely violate problem-specific feasibility constraints, (ii) a verification-and-repair pipeline to correct infeasible solutions post-optimization, and (iii) adaptive strategies for recalculating correlations and controlling the graph shrinking process. We apply our approach to three standard benchmark problems: Multidimensional Knapsack (MDKP), Maximum Independent Set (MIS), and the Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). Empirical results show that our approach improves solution feasibility, reduces repair complexity, and enhances quantum optimization quality on hardware-limited instances. These findings demonstrate a scalable pathway for applying near-term quantum algorithms to classically challenging constrained optimization problems.

  • 2 authors
·
Jun 17, 2025

A Distributed Hybrid Quantum Convolutional Neural Network for Medical Image Classification

Medical images are characterized by intricate and complex features, requiring interpretation by physicians with medical knowledge and experience. Classical neural networks can reduce the workload of physicians, but can only handle these complex features to a limited extent. Theoretically, quantum computing can explore a broader parameter space with fewer parameters, but it is currently limited by the constraints of quantum hardware.Considering these factors, we propose a distributed hybrid quantum convolutional neural network based on quantum circuit splitting. This model leverages the advantages of quantum computing to effectively capture the complex features of medical images, enabling efficient classification even in resource-constrained environments. Our model employs a quantum convolutional neural network (QCNN) to extract high-dimensional features from medical images, thereby enhancing the model's expressive capability.By integrating distributed techniques based on quantum circuit splitting, the 8-qubit QCNN can be reconstructed using only 5 qubits.Experimental results demonstrate that our model achieves strong performance across 3 datasets for both binary and multiclass classification tasks. Furthermore, compared to recent technologies, our model achieves superior performance with fewer parameters, and experimental results validate the effectiveness of our model.

  • 6 authors
·
Jan 7, 2025

QKAN-LSTM: Quantum-inspired Kolmogorov-Arnold Long Short-term Memory

Long short-term memory (LSTM) models are a particular type of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) that are central to sequential modeling tasks in domains such as urban telecommunication forecasting, where temporal correlations and nonlinear dependencies dominate. However, conventional LSTMs suffer from high parameter redundancy and limited nonlinear expressivity. In this work, we propose the Quantum-inspired Kolmogorov-Arnold Long Short-Term Memory (QKAN-LSTM), which integrates Data Re-Uploading Activation (DARUAN) modules into the gating structure of LSTMs. Each DARUAN acts as a quantum variational activation function (QVAF), enhancing frequency adaptability and enabling an exponentially enriched spectral representation without multi-qubit entanglement. The resulting architecture preserves quantum-level expressivity while remaining fully executable on classical hardware. Empirical evaluations on three datasets, Damped Simple Harmonic Motion, Bessel Function, and Urban Telecommunication, demonstrate that QKAN-LSTM achieves superior predictive accuracy and generalization with a 79% reduction in trainable parameters compared to classical LSTMs. We extend the framework to the Jiang-Huang-Chen-Goan Network (JHCG Net), which generalizes KAN to encoder-decoder structures, and then further use QKAN to realize the latent KAN, thereby creating a Hybrid QKAN (HQKAN) for hierarchical representation learning. The proposed HQKAN-LSTM thus provides a scalable and interpretable pathway toward quantum-inspired sequential modeling in real-world data environments.

  • 8 authors
·
Dec 4, 2025 2

Enhancing Quantum Variational Algorithms with Zero Noise Extrapolation via Neural Networks

In the emergent realm of quantum computing, the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) stands out as a promising algorithm for solving complex quantum problems, especially in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era. However, the ubiquitous presence of noise in quantum devices often limits the accuracy and reliability of VQE outcomes. This research introduces a novel approach to ameliorate this challenge by utilizing neural networks for zero noise extrapolation (ZNE) in VQE computations. By employing the Qiskit framework, we crafted parameterized quantum circuits using the RY-RZ ansatz and examined their behavior under varying levels of depolarizing noise. Our investigations spanned from determining the expectation values of a Hamiltonian, defined as a tensor product of Z operators, under different noise intensities to extracting the ground state energy. To bridge the observed outcomes under noise with the ideal noise-free scenario, we trained a Feed Forward Neural Network on the error probabilities and their associated expectation values. Remarkably, our model proficiently predicted the VQE outcome under hypothetical noise-free conditions. By juxtaposing the simulation results with real quantum device executions, we unveiled the discrepancies induced by noise and showcased the efficacy of our neural network-based ZNE technique in rectifying them. This integrative approach not only paves the way for enhanced accuracy in VQE computations on NISQ devices but also underlines the immense potential of hybrid quantum-classical paradigms in circumventing the challenges posed by quantum noise. Through this research, we envision a future where quantum algorithms can be reliably executed on noisy devices, bringing us one step closer to realizing the full potential of quantum computing.

  • 4 authors
·
Mar 10, 2024