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arXiv:2003.09938 · Scientific Reports

Speeding up quantum perceptron via shortcuts to adiabaticity

Yue Ban, Xi Chen, E. Torrontegui, E. Solano, J. Casanova

Published Mar 11, 2021• 22 citations
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Abstract

The quantum perceptron is a fundamental building block for quantum machine learning. This is a multidisciplinary field that incorporates abilities of quantum computing, such as state superposition and entanglement, to classical machine learning schemes. Motivated by the techniques of shortcuts to adiabaticity, we propose a speed-up quantum perceptron where a control field on the perceptron is inversely engineered leading to a rapid nonlinear response with a sigmoid activation function. This results in faster overall perceptron performance compared to quasi-adiabatic protocols, as well as in enhanced robustness against imperfections in the controls.

DOI
10.1038/s41598-021-85208-3

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The quantum perceptron is a fundamental building block for quantum machine learning. This is a multidisciplinary field that incorporates abilities of quantum computing, such as state superposition and entanglement, to classical machine learning schemes. Motivated by the techniques of shortcuts to adiabaticity, we propose a speed-up quantum perceptron where a control field on the perceptron is inversely engineered leading to a rapid nonlinear response with a sigmoid activation function. This results in faster overall perceptron performance compared to quasi-adiabatic protocols, as well as in enhanced robustness against imperfections in the controls.
We demonstrate that it is possible to implement a quantum perceptron with a sigmoid activation function as an efficient, reversible many-body unitary operation. When inserted in a neural network, the perceptron's response is parameterized by the potential exerted by other neurons. We prove that such a quantum neural network is a universal approximator of continuous functions, with at least the same power as classical neural networks. While engineering general perceptrons is a challenging control problem —also defined in this work— the ubiquitous sigmoid-response neuron can be implemented as a quasi-adiabatic passage with an Ising model. In this construct, the scaling of resources is favorable with respect to the total network size and is dominated by the number of layers. We expect that our sigmoid perceptron will have applications also in quantum sensing or variational estimation of many-body Hamiltonians.
We demonstrate that it is possible to implement a quantum perceptron with a sigmoid activation function as an efficient, reversible many-body unitary operation. When inserted in a neural network, the perceptron's response is parameterized by the potential exerted by other neurons. We prove that such a quantum neural network is a universal approximator of continuous functions, with the same power as classical neural networks. While engineering general perceptrons is a challenging control problem --also defined in this work--, the ubiquitous sigmoid-response neuron can be implemented as a quasi-adiabatic passage with an Ising model. In this construct, the scaling of resources is favorable with respect to the total network size and is dominated by the number of layers. We expect that our sigmoid perceptron will have applications also in quantum sensing or variational estimation of many-body Hamiltonians.
Abstract With the growing interest in quantum machine learning, the perceptron, a fundamental building block in traditional machine learning, has emerged as a valuable model for exploring the potential of quantum algorithms. In this work, we make two principal contributions. First, we revisit the quantum version space perceptron algorithm proposed by Kapoor et al. (2016), by identifying and correcting a flawed complexity assumption. We show that the query complexity of the algorithm is dimension-dependent, which has significant implications for its behaviour in high-dimensional regimes under worst-case scenarios. Second, we propose and analyse two quantum-enhanced cutting-plane algorithms for perceptron learning. Specifically, we leverage established quantum subroutines such as Grover’s search and quantum walk search , and provide detailed algorithmic constructions together with query and arithmetic complexity analyses. Our results establish improved complexity bounds under an idealised implementation framework and noise-free quantum computational models, offering insights into the trade-offs between margin dependence, dimensional dependence, and quantum resources. These findings provide a refined understanding of quantum perceptron models and their theoretical computational complexity properties.
Quantum machine learning emerges from the symbiosis of quantum mechanics and machine learning. In particular, the latter gets displayed in quantum sciences as: (i) the use of classical machine learning as a tool applied to quantum physics problems, (ii) or the use of quantum resources such as superposition, entanglement, or quantum optimization protocols to enhance the performance of classification and regression tasks compare to their classical counterparts. This paper reviews examples in these two scenarios. On the one hand, the application of classical neural network to design a new quantum sensing protocol. On the other hand, the design of a quantum neural network based on the dynamics of a quantum perceptron optimized with the aid of shortcuts to adiabaticity gives rise to a short operation time and robust performance. These examples demonstrate the mutual reinforcement of both neural networks and quantum physics.
Quantum neural networks (QNN) have been proposed as a promising architecture for quantum machine learning. There exist a number of different quantum circuit designs being branded as QNNs, however no clear candidate has presented itself as more suitable than the others. Rather, the search for a ``quantum perceptron" -- the fundamental building block of a QNN -- is still underway. One candidate is quantum perceptrons designed to emulate the nonlinear activation functions of classical perceptrons. Such sigmoid quantum perceptrons (SQPs) inherit the universal approximation property that guarantees that classical neural networks can approximate any function. However, this does not guarantee that QNNs built from SQPs will have any quantum advantage over their classical counterparts. Here we critically investigate both the capabilities and performance of SQP networks by computing their effective dimension and effective capacity, as well as examining their performance on real learning problems. The results are compared to those obtained for other candidate networks which lack activation functions. It is found that simpler, and apparently easier-to-implement parametric quantum circuits actually perform better than SQPs. This indicates that the universal approximation theorem, which a cornerstone of the theory of classical neural networks, is not a relevant criterion for QNNs.
Abstract The field of artificial neural networks is expected to strongly benefit from recent developments of quantum computers. In particular, quantum machine learning, a class of quantum algorithms which exploit qubits for creating trainable neural networks, will provide more power to solve problems such as pattern recognition, clustering and machine learning in general. The building block of feed-forward neural networks consists of one layer of neurons connected to an output neuron that is activated according to an arbitrary activation function. The corresponding learning algorithm goes under the name of Rosenblatt perceptron. Quantum perceptrons with specific activation functions are known, but a general method to realize arbitrary activation functions on a quantum computer is still lacking. Here, we fill this gap with a quantum algorithm which is capable to approximate any analytic activation functions to any given order of its power series. Unlike previous proposals providing irreversible measurement–based and simplified activation functions, here we show how to approximate any analytic function to any required accuracy without the need to measure the states encoding the information. Thanks to the generality of this construction, any feed-forward neural network may acquire the universal approximation properties according to Hornik’s theorem. Our results recast the science of artificial neural networks in the architecture of gate-model quantum computers.