The fundamental question of how to best simulate quantum systems using conventional computational resources lies at the forefront of condensed matter and quantum computation. It impacts both our understanding of quantum materials and our ability to emulate quantum circuits. Here we present an exact formulation of quantum dynamics via factorized generalized measurements which maps quantum states to probability distributions with the advantage that local unitary dynamics and quantum channels map to local quasistochastic matrices. This representation provides a general framework for using state-of-the-art probabilistic models in machine learning for the simulation of quantum many-body dynamics. Using this framework, we have developed a practical algorithm to simulate quantum circuits using an attention network based on a powerful neural network ansatz responsible for the most recent breakthroughs in natural language processing. We demonstrate our approach by simulating circuits that build Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger and linear graph states of up to 60 qubits, as well as a variational quantum eigensolver circuit for preparing the ground state of the transverse field Ising model on several system sizes. Our methodology constitutes a modern machine learning approach to the simulation of quantum physics with applicability both to quantum circuits as well as other quantum many-body systems.
The fundamental question of how to best simulate quantum systems using conventional computational resources lies at the forefront of condensed matter and quantum computation. It impacts both our understanding of quantum materials and our ability to emulate quantum circuits. Here we present an exact formulation of quantum dynamics via factorized generalized measurements which maps quantum states to probability distributions with the advantage that local unitary dynamics and quantum channels map to local quasistochastic matrices. This representation provides a general framework for using state-of-the-art probabilistic models in machine learning for the simulation of quantum many-body dynamics. Using this framework, we have developed a practical algorithm to simulate quantum circuits using an attention network based on a powerful neural network ansatz responsible for the most recent breakthroughs in natural language processing. We demonstrate our approach by simulating circuits that build Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger and linear graph states of up to 60 qubits, as well as a variational quantum eigensolver circuit for preparing the ground state of the transverse field Ising model on several system sizes. Our methodology constitutes a modern machine learning approach to the simulation of quantum physics with applicability both to quantum circuits as well as other quantum many-body systems.
The simulation of quantum circuits presents a significant bottleneck in the development and understanding of quantum algorithms. Traditional methods relying on the full wave function description quickly become computationally intractable as the number of qubits and circuit depth increases. This work proposes a novel approach utilizing neural networks to approximate the probabilities of measurement outcomes within a quantum circuit. The core idea is to train a neural network to learn the complex dynamics of quantum evolution, thereby enabling efficient simulation with a significantly reduced parameter space. We introduce a framework that maps the quantum circuit to a neural network architecture, allowing for approximate but tractable simulation. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated through theoretical analysis and a conceptual implementation strategy, highlighting its potential to unlock the exploration of complex quantum algorithms and accelerate the development of quantum computing. The primary objective is to provide a computationally feasible alternative to traditional simulation techniques, bridging the gap between theoretical quantum algorithm design and practical implementation. The key innovation lies in leveraging the representational power of neural networks to capture the essential correlations inherent in quantum systems.
Neural network approaches to machine learning problems rely on statistical frameworks that are designed to generalize to many situations, whereas traditional physics-based approaches to quantum problems stem from specific physical laws that govern the behavior of certain classes of systems. While quantum physics and machine learning have been largely disparate fields for most of their history, their interplay has gained considerable attention in recent years, primarily driven by the premise that the most powerful computational models are those whose foundations stem from both physical and statistical principles. Two overarching strategies in this area include building physics-based machine learning models from the ground up, or alternatively, looking for hidden ways that statistical models include aspects of physical systems. Many-body quantum systems turn out to be a useful testing ground for both of these approaches, due to the complex behavior that arises from simple fundamental rules. Here, we present several ways that neural networks can represent many-body spin states, which enables the exploration into the underlying nature of neural networks, as well as gaining insight into how effective different classes of models are for simulating physical systems. The main focus areas of this thesis are (1) connecting convolutional neural networks to maximum-entropy distributions when applied to spin systems, (2) using generative models to gain physical insights into experimental tomographic data, and (3) applying inverse reinforcement learning to probe the nature of agent-based quantum circuit design.
The state-of-the-art machine learning approaches are based on classical von Neumann computing architectures and have been widely used in many industrial and academic domains. With the recent development of quantum computing, researchers and tech-giants have attempted new quantum circuits for machine learning tasks. However, the existing quantum computing platforms are hard to simulate classical deep learning models or problems because of the intractability of deep quantum circuits. Thus, it is necessary to design feasible quantum algorithms for quantum machine learning for noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) devices. This work explores variational quantum circuits for deep reinforcement learning. Specifically, we reshape classical deep reinforcement learning algorithms like experience replay and target network into a representation of variational quantum circuits. Moreover, we use a quantum information encoding scheme to reduce the number of model parameters compared to classical neural networks. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first proof-of-principle demonstration of variational quantum circuits to approximate the deep Q-value function for decision-making and policy-selection reinforcement learning with experience replay and target network. Besides, our variational quantum circuits can be deployed in many near-term NISQ machines.
Abstract The exact description of many-body quantum systems represents one of the major challenges in modern physics, because it requires an amount of computational resources that scales exponentially with the size of the system. Simulating the evolution of a state, or even storing its description, rapidly becomes intractable for exact classical algorithms. Recently, machine learning techniques, in the form of restricted Boltzmann machines, have been proposed as a way to efficiently represent certain quantum states with applications in state tomography and ground state estimation. Here, we introduce a practically usable deep architecture for representing and sampling from probability distributions of quantum states. Our representation is based on variational auto-encoders, a type of generative model in the form of a neural network. We show that this model is able to learn efficient representations of states that are easy to simulate classically and can compress states that are not classically tractable. Specifically, we consider the learnability of a class of quantum states introduced by Fefferman and Umans. Such states are provably hard to sample for classical computers, but not for quantum ones, under plausible computational complexity assumptions. The good level of compression achieved for hard states suggests these methods can be suitable for characterizing states of the size expected in first generation quantum hardware.
The exact description of many-body quantum systems represents one of the major challenges in modern physics, because it requires an amount of computational resources that scales exponentially with the size of the system. Simulating the evolution of a state, or even storing its description, rapidly becomes intractable for exact classical algorithms. Recently, machine learning techniques, in the form of restricted Boltzmann machines, have been proposed as a way to efficiently represent certain quantum states with applications in state tomography and ground state estimation. Here, we introduce a practically usable deep architecture for representing and sampling from probability distributions of quantum states. Our representation is based on variational auto-encoders, a type of generative model in the form of a neural network. We show that this model is able to learn efficient representations of states that are easy to simulate classically and can compress states that are not classically tractable. Specifically, we consider the learnability of a class of quantum states introduced by Fefferman and Umans. Such states are provably hard to sample for classical computers, but not for quantum ones, under plausible computational complexity assumptions. The good level of compression achieved for hard states suggests these methods can be suitable for characterizing states of the size expected in first generation quantum hardware.
Quantum many-body computation is a central challenge across multiple domains of scientific research, and Monte Carlo method has emerged as one of the most effective numerical techniques for investigating large-scale many-body systems. In recent years, the integration of Monte Carlo methods with machine learning has led to the development of neural quantum state approach. Quantum neural networks (QNNs) offer superior expressiveness compared to classical neural networks. In this paper, we propose a novel Quantum Neural Network Quantum State (QNNQS) method, based on the variational Monte Carlo framework. This approach leverages a quantum neural network to represent the many-body quantum state, and optimizes it iteratively through gradient descent to determine the ground-state energy. To assess the performance of this method, we conduct simulations of the one-dimensional transverse-field Ising model, investigating the influence of quantum circuit architecture on circuit expressibility, entangling capability, and computational accuracy. The results demonstrate that the QNNQS method achieves comparable simulation accuracy while utilizing significantly fewer parameters and requiring less training resources than classical network quantum state methods.