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arXiv:2105.06285 · Physical Review A

Memory compression and thermal efficiency of quantum implementations of nondeterministic hidden Markov models

Thomas J. Elliott

Published May 28, 2021• 16 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Stochastic modeling is an essential component of the quantitative sciences, with hidden Markov models (HMMs) often playing a central role. Concurrently, the rise of quantum technologies promises a host of advantages in computational problems, typically in terms of the scaling of requisite resources such as time and memory. HMMs are no exception to this, with recent results highlighting quantum implementations of deterministic HMMs exhibiting superior memory and thermal efficiency relative to their classical counterparts. In many contexts, however, nondeterministic HMMs are viable alternatives; compared to them, the advantages of current quantum implementations do not always hold. Here, we provide a systematic prescription for constructing quantum implementations of nondeterministic HMMs that reestablish the quantum advantages against this broader class. Crucially, we show that whenever the classical implementation suffers from thermal dissipation due to its need to process information in a time-local manner, our quantum implementations will both mitigate some of this dissipation and achieve an advantage in memory compression.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.103.052615

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Stochastic modeling is an essential component of the quantitative sciences, with hidden Markov models (HMMs) often playing a central role. Concurrently, the rise of quantum technologies promises a host of advantages in computational problems, typically in terms of the scaling of requisite resources such as time and memory. HMMs are no exception to this, with recent results highlighting quantum implementations of deterministic HMMs exhibiting superior memory and thermal efficiency relative to their classical counterparts. In many contexts, however, nondeterministic HMMs are viable alternatives; compared to them, the advantages of current quantum implementations do not always hold. Here, we provide a systematic prescription for constructing quantum implementations of nondeterministic HMMs that reestablish the quantum advantages against this broader class. Crucially, we show that whenever the classical implementation suffers from thermal dissipation due to its need to process information in a time-local manner, our quantum implementations will both mitigate some of this dissipation and achieve an advantage in memory compression.
Hidden Markov models (HMMs) are ubiquitous in time-series modelling, with applications ranging from chemical reaction modelling to speech recognition. These HMMs are often large, with high-dimensional memories. A recently-proposed application of quantum technologies is to execute quantum analogues of HMMs. Such quantum HMMs (QHMMs) are strictly more expressive than their classical counterparts, enabling the construction of more parsimonious models of stochastic processes. However, state-of-the-art techniques for QHMM compression, based on tensor networks, are only applicable for a restricted subset of HMMs, where the transitions are deterministic. In this work we introduce a pipeline by which \emph{any} finite, ergodic HMM can be compressed in this manner, providing a route for effective quantum dimension reduction of general HMMs. We demonstrate the method on both a simple toy model, and on a speech-derived HMM trained from data, obtaining favourable memory--accuracy trade-offs in the examples studied, relative to a simple classical state-merging baseline.
Stochastic modeling of complex systems plays an essential, yet often computationally intensive, role across the quantitative sciences.Recent advances in quantum information processing have elucidated the potential for quantum simulators to exhibit memory advantages for such tasks.Heretofore, the focus has been on lossless memory compression, wherein the advantage is typically in terms of lessening the amount of information tracked by the model, while-arguably more practical-reductions in memory dimension are not always possible.Here, we address the case of lossy compression for quantum stochastic modeling of continuous-time processes, introducing a method for coarse graining in quantum state space that drastically reduces the requisite memory dimension for modeling temporal dynamics while retaining near-exact statistics.In contrast to classical coarse graining, this compression is not based on sacrificing temporal resolution and brings memory-efficient high-fidelity stochastic modeling within reach of present quantum technologies.
Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) have become very popular as a computational tool for the analysis of sequential data. They are memoryless machines which transition from one internal state to another, while producing symbols. These symbols constitute the output of the machine and form an infinite time series. Analogously, Hidden Quantum Markov Models (HQMM) produce an infinite time series, while progressing from one quantum state to another through stochastic quantum operations. Here we compare 1-bit HMMs and 1-qubit HQMMs and show that the latter can produce stronger correlations, although both machines are, in principle, comparable in resources.
Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) have become very popular as a computational tool for the analysis of sequential data. They are memoryless machines which transition from one internal state to another, while producing symbols. These symbols constitute the output of the machine and form an infinite time series. Analogously, Hidden Quantum Markov Models (HQMM) produce an infinite time series, while progressing from one quantum state to another through stochastic quantum operations. Here we compare 1-bit HMMs and 1-qubit HQMMs and show that the latter can produce stronger correlations, although both machines are, in principle, comparable in resources.
Among the predictive hidden Markov models that describe a given stochastic process, the ϵ-machine is strongly minimal in that it minimizes every Rényi-based memory measure. Quantum models can be smaller still. In contrast with the ϵ-machine ’s unique role in the classical setting, however, among the class of processes described by pure-state hidden quantum Markov models, there are those for which there does not exist any strongly minimal model. Quantum memory optimization then depends on which memory measure best matches a given problem’s circumstance.
Tracking the behaviour of stochastic systems is a crucial task in the statistical sciences. It has recently been shown that quantum models can faithfully simulate such processes whilst retaining less information about the past behaviour of the system than the optimal classical models. We extend these results to general temporal and symbolic dynamics. Our systematic protocol for quantum model construction relies only on an elementary description of the dynamics of the process. This circumvents restrictions on corresponding classical construction protocols, and allows for a broader range of processes to be modelled efficiently. We illustrate our method with an example exhibiting an apparent unbounded memory advantage of the quantum model compared to its optimal classical counterpart.