A central roadblock to analyzing quantum algorithms on quantum states is the lack of a comparable input model for classical algorithms. Inspired by recent work of the author [E. Tang, STOC 2019.], we introduce such a model, where we assume we can efficiently perform ℓ^{2}-norm samples of input data, a natural analog to quantum algorithms that assume efficient state preparation of classical data. Though this model produces less practical algorithms than the (stronger) standard model of classical computation, it captures versions of many of the features and nuances of quantum linear algebra algorithms. With this model, we describe classical analogs to Lloyd, Mohseni, and Rebentrost's quantum algorithms for principal component analysis [S. Lloyd, M. Mohseni, and P. Rebentrost, Nat. Phys. 10, 631 (2014).NPAHAX1745-247310.1038/nphys3029] and nearest-centroid clustering [S. Lloyd, M. Mohseni, and P. Rebentrost, Quantum algorithms for supervised and unsupervised machine learning]. Since they are only polynomially slower, these algorithms suggest that the exponential speedups of their quantum counterparts are simply an artifact of state preparation assumptions.
A central roadblock to analyzing quantum algorithms on quantum states is the lack of a comparable input model for classical algorithms. Inspired by recent work of the author [E. Tang, STOC 2019.], we introduce such a model, where we assume we can efficiently perform ℓ^{2}-norm samples of input data, a natural analog to quantum algorithms that assume efficient state preparation of classical data. Though this model produces less practical algorithms than the (stronger) standard model of classical computation, it captures versions of many of the features and nuances of quantum linear algebra algorithms. With this model, we describe classical analogs to Lloyd, Mohseni, and Rebentrost's quantum algorithms for principal component analysis [S. Lloyd, M. Mohseni, and P. Rebentrost, Nat. Phys. 10, 631 (2014).NPAHAX1745-247310.1038/nphys3029] and nearest-centroid clustering [S. Lloyd, M. Mohseni, and P. Rebentrost, Quantum algorithms for supervised and unsupervised machine learning]. Since they are only polynomially slower, these algorithms suggest that the exponential speedups of their quantum counterparts are simply an artifact of state preparation assumptions.
Along with the development of quantum technology, finding useful applications of quantum computers has been a central pursuit. Despite various quantum algorithms have been developed, many of them often require strong input assumptions, which is hardware demanding. In particular, recent advances on dequantization have revealed that the quantum advantage is more of a mere artifact of strong input assumptions. In this work, we propose a variant of these algorithms, leveraging both classical and quantum resources. Provided the classical knowledge (the entries) of the matrix/vector of interest, a classical procedure is used to pre-process this information. Then they are fed into a quantum circuit which is shown to be a block encoding of the matrix of interest. From this block-encoding, we show how to use it to tackle a wide range of problems, including principal component analysis, linear equation solving, Hamiltonian simulation, preparing ground state, and data fitting. We also analyze our protocol, showing that both the classical and quantum procedure can achieve logarithmic complexity in the input dimension, thus implying its potential for near term realization. We then discuss several implications and corollaries of our result. First,, our results suggest there are certain matrices/Hamiltonians where our method can provide exponential improvement compared to the existing ones with respect to the sparsity. Regarding dense linear systems, our method achieves exponential speed-up with respect to the inverse of error tolerance, compared to the best previously known quantum algorithm for dense systems. Last, and most importantly, regarding quantum data fitting, we show how the output of our quantum algorithms can be leveraged to predict unseen data. Thus, it provides an end-to-end application, which has been an open aspect of the previous quantum data fitting algorithm.
Abstract Kernel principal component analysis (kernel PCA) is a nonlinear dimensionality reduction technique that employs kernel functions to map data into a high-dimensional feature space, thereby extending the applicability of linear PCA to nonlinear data and facilitating the extraction of informative principal components. However, kernel PCA necessitates the manipulation of large-scale matrices, leading to high computational complexity and posing challenges for efficient implementation in big data environments. Quantum computing has recently been integrated with kernel methods in machine learning, enabling effective analysis of input data within intractable feature spaces. Although existing quantum kernel PCA proposals promise exponential speedups, they impose stringent requirements on quantum hardware that are challenging to fulfill. In this work, we propose a quantum algorithm for kernel PCA by establishing a connection between quantum kernel methods and block encoding, thereby diagonalizing the centralized kernel matrix on a quantum computer. The query complexity is logarithmic with respect to the size of the data vector, D , and linear with respect to the size of the dataset. An exponential speedup could be achieved when the dataset consists of a few high-dimensional vectors, wherein the dataset size is polynomial in log ( D ) , with D being significantly large. In contrast to existing work, our algorithm enhances the efficiency of quantum kernel PCA and reduces the requirements for quantum hardware. Furthermore, we have also demonstrated that the algorithm based on block encoding matches the lower bound of query complexity, indicating that our algorithm is nearly optimal. Our research has laid down new pathways for developing quantum machine learning algorithms aimed at addressing tangible real-world problems and demonstrating quantum advantages within machine learning.
Achieving a provable exponential quantum speedup for an important machine learning task has been a central research goal since the seminal HHL quantum algorithm for solving linear systems and the subsequent quantum recommender systems algorithm by Kerenidis and Prakash. These algorithms were initially believed to be strong candidates for exponential speedups, but a lower bound ruling out similar classical improvements remained absent. In breakthrough work by Tang, it was demonstrated that this lack of progress in classical lower bounds was for good reasons. Concretely, she gave a classical counterpart of the quantum recommender systems algorithm, reducing the quantum advantage to a mere polynomial. Her approach is quite general and was named quantum-inspired classical algorithms. Since then, almost all the initially exponential quantum machine learning speedups have been reduced to polynomial via new quantum-inspired classical algorithms. From the current state-of-affairs, it is unclear whether we can hope for exponential quantum speedups for any natural machine learning task. In this work, we present the first such provable exponential separation between quantum and quantum-inspired classical algorithms for the basic problem of solving a linear system when the input matrix is well-conditioned and has sparse rows and columns.
We give a classical analogue to Kerenidis and Prakash’s quantum recommendation system, previously believed to be one of the strongest candidates for provably exponential speedups in quantum machine learning. Our main result is an algorithm that, given an m × n matrix in a data structure supporting certain ℓ2-norm sampling operations, outputs an ℓ2-norm sample from a rank-k approximation of that matrix in time O(poly(k)log(mn)), only polynomially slower than the quantum algorithm. As a consequence, Kerenidis and Prakash’s algorithm does not in fact give an exponential speedup over classical algorithms. Further, under strong input assumptions, the classical recommendation system resulting from our algorithm produces recommendations exponentially faster than previous classical systems, which run in time linear in m and n.
Abstract Principal component analysis (PCA) is an important dimensionality reduction method in machine learning and data analysis. Recently, the quantum version of PCA has been established to diagonalize quantum states. Although these quantum algorithms promise quantum advantages, they require substantial resources beyond the reach of state-of-the-art quantum technologies. This work aims to reduce resource requirements and improve the efficiency of quantum PCA. Assuming that the quantum state is accessed through a purified quantum query model and a sampling model, we propose quantum algorithms that use minimal resource requirements for ancillary qubits to reveal properties of eigenvectors and eigenvalues of a state. In particular, we show that estimating eigenvalue λ with error ε and success probability larger than λ ( 1 − η ) requests a query complexity O ~ ( ϵ − 1 ) and a sample complexity O ~ ( ϵ − 2 η − 1 ) , respectively. To our knowledge, our result is the first quantum speedup that achieves asymptotic linear scaling in 1 / ϵ for quantum PCA. As applications, we discuss estimating the minimum relative entropy of entanglement of bipartite pure-states and performing quantum state discrimination tasks. We show that quantum speedups are maintained when the pure state has a low Schmidt number and states of discrimination have a low rank. This study opens up a new quantum PCA method for high-dimensional quantum data analysis and discusses its application in quantum information processing tasks.
We give a classical algorithm for linear regression analogous to the quantum matrix inversion algorithm [Harrow, Hassidim, and Lloyd, Physical Review Letters'09] for low-rank matrices [Wossnig, Zhao, and Prakash, Physical Review Letters'18], when the input matrix A is stored in a data structure applicable for QRAM-based state preparation.Namely, suppose we are given an A∈Cm×n with minimum non-zero singular value σ which supports certain efficient ℓ2 -norm importance sampling queries, along with a b∈Cm . Then, for some x∈Cn satisfying ‖x–A+b‖≤ε‖A+b‖ , we can output a measurement of |x⟩ in the computational basis and output an entry of x with classical algorithms that run in O~(‖A‖F6‖A‖6σ12ε4) and O~(‖A‖F6‖A‖2σ8ε4) time, respectively. This improves on previous "quantum-inspired" algorithms in this line of research by at least a factor of ‖A‖16σ16ε2 [Chia, Gilyén, Li, Lin, Tang, and Wang, STOC'20]. As a consequence, we show that quantum computers can achieve at most a factor-of-12 speedup for linear regression in this QRAM data structure setting and related settings. Our work applies techniques from sketching algorithms and optimization to the quantum-inspired literature. Unlike earlier works, this is a promising avenue that could lead to feasible implementations of classical regression in a quantum-inspired settings, for comparison against future quantum computers.