Quantum machine learning has the potential to computationally outperform classical machine learning, but it is not yet clear whether it will actually be valuable for practical problems. While some artificial scenarios have shown that certain quantum machine learning techniques may be advantageous compared to their classical counterpart, evidence does not yet suggest that quantum machine learning has surpassed conventional approaches in dealing with standard classical datasets, such as the MNIST dataset. In contrast, dealing with quantum data, such as quantum states or circuits, may be the task where we can benefit from quantum methods. Therefore, it is important to develop practically meaningful quantum datasets for which we expect quantum methods to be superior. In this paper, we propose a machine learning task that is likely to soon arise in the real world: clustering and classification of quantum circuits. We provide a dataset of quantum circuits optimized by the variational quantum eigensolver. We utilized six common types of Hamiltonians in condensed matter physics, with a range of 4–20 qubits, and applied ten different ansatz with varying depths (ranging from 3 to 32) to generate a quantum circuit dataset of six distinct classes, each containing 300 samples. We show that this dataset can be easily learned using quantum methods. In particular, we demonstrate a successful classification of our dataset using real four-qubit devices available through IBMQ. By providing a setting and an elementary dataset where quantum machine learning is expected to be beneficial, we hope to encourage and ease the advancement of the field.
Quantum machine learning has the potential to computationally outperform classical machine learning, but it is not yet clear whether it will actually be valuable for practical problems. While some artificial scenarios have shown that certain quantum machine learning techniques may be advantageous compared to their classical counterpart, evidence does not yet suggest that quantum machine learning has surpassed conventional approaches in dealing with standard classical datasets, such as the MNIST dataset. In contrast, dealing with quantum data, such as quantum states or circuits, may be the task where we can benefit from quantum methods. Therefore, it is important to develop practically meaningful quantum datasets for which we expect quantum methods to be superior. In this paper, we propose a machine learning task that is likely to soon arise in the real world: clustering and classification of quantum circuits. We provide a dataset of quantum circuits optimized by the variational quantum eigensolver. We utilized six common types of Hamiltonians in condensed matter physics, with a range of 4–20 qubits, and applied ten different ansatz with varying depths (ranging from 3 to 32) to generate a quantum circuit dataset of six distinct classes, each containing 300 samples. We show that this dataset can be easily learned using quantum methods. In particular, we demonstrate a successful classification of our dataset using real four-qubit devices available through IBMQ. By providing a setting and an elementary dataset where quantum machine learning is expected to be beneficial, we hope to encourage and ease the advancement of the field.
In this article, we investigate the applicability of quantum machine learning for classification tasks using two quantum classifiers from the Qiskit Python environment: the variational quantum circuit and the quantum kernel estimator (QKE). We provide a first evaluation on the performance of these classifiers when using a hyperparameter search on six widely known and publicly available benchmark datasets and analyze how their performance varies with the number of samples on two artificially generated test classification datasets. As quantum machine learning is based on unitary transformations, this paper explores data structures and application fields that could be particularly suitable for quantum advantages. Hereby, this paper introduces a novel dataset based on concepts from quantum mechanics using the exponential map of a Lie algebra. This dataset will be made publicly available and contributes a novel contribution to the empirical evaluation of quantum supremacy. We further compared the performance of VQC and QKE on six widely applicable datasets to contextualize our results. Our results demonstrate that the VQC and QKE perform better than basic machine learning algorithms, such as advanced linear regression models (Ridge and Lasso). They do not match the accuracy and runtime performance of sophisticated modern boosting classifiers such as XGBoost, LightGBM, or CatBoost. Therefore, we conclude that while quantum machine learning algorithms have the potential to surpass classical machine learning methods in the future, especially when physical quantum infrastructure becomes widely available, they currently lag behind classical approaches. Our investigations also show that classical machine learning approaches have superior performance classifying datasets based on group structures, compared to quantum approaches that particularly use unitary processes. Furthermore, our findings highlight the significant impact of different quantum simulators, feature maps, and quantum circuits on the performance of the employed quantum estimators. This observation emphasizes the need for researchers to provide detailed explanations of their hyperparameter choices for quantum machine learning algorithms, as this aspect is currently overlooked in many studies within the field. To facilitate further research in this area and ensure the transparency of our study, we have made the complete code available in a linked GitHub repository.
Abstract Quantum machine learning (QML) is an emerging field that investigates the capabilities of quantum computers for learning tasks. While QML models can theoretically offer advantages such as exponential speed-ups, challenges in data loading and the ability to scale to relevant problem sizes have prevented demonstrations of such advantages on practical problems. In particular, the encoding of arbitrary classical data into quantum states usually comes at a high computational cost, either in terms of qubits or gate count. However, real-world data typically exhibits some inherent structure (such as image data) which can be leveraged to load them with a much smaller cost on a quantum computer. This work further develops an efficient algorithm for finding low-depth quantum circuits to load classical image data as quantum states. To evaluate its effectiveness, we conduct systematic studies on the MNIST, Fashion-MNIST, CIFAR-10, and Imagenette datasets. The corresponding circuits for loading the full large-scale datasets are available publicly as PennyLane datasets and can be used by the community for their own benchmarks. We further analyze the performance of various quantum classifiers, such as quantum kernel methods, parameterized quantum circuits, and tensor-network classifiers, and we compare them to convolutional neural networks. In particular, we focus on the performance of the quantum classifiers as we introduce nonlinear functions of the input state, e.g. by letting the circuit parameters depend on the input state.
High-quality, large-scale datasets have played a crucial role in the development and success of classical machine learning. Quantum Machine Learning (QML) is a new field that aims to use quantum computers for data analysis, with the hope of obtaining a quantum advantage of some sort. While most proposed QML architectures are benchmarked using classical datasets, there is still doubt whether QML on classical datasets will achieve such an advantage. In this work, we argue that one should instead employ quantum datasets composed of quantum states. For this purpose, we introduce the NTangled dataset composed of quantum states with different amounts and types of multipartite entanglement. We first show how a quantum neural network can be trained to generate the states in the NTangled dataset. Then, we use the NTangled dataset to benchmark QML models for supervised learning classification tasks. We also consider an alternative entanglement-based dataset, which is scalable and is composed of states prepared by quantum circuits with different depths. As a byproduct of our results, we introduce a novel method for generating multipartite entangled states, providing a use-case of quantum neural networks for quantum entanglement theory.
The advent of noisy-intermediate scale quantum computers has introduced the exciting possibility of achieving quantum speedups in machine learning tasks. These devices, however, are composed of a small number of qubits and can faithfully run only short circuits. This puts many proposed approaches for quantum machine learning beyond currently available devices. We address the problem of compressing classical data into efficient representations on quantum devices. Our proposed methods allow both the required number of qubits and depth of the quantum circuit to be tuned. We achieve this by using a correspondence between matrix-product states and quantum circuits and further propose a hardware-efficient quantum circuit approach, which we benchmark on the Fashion-MNIST dataset. Finally, we demonstrate that a quantum circuit-based classifier can achieve competitive accuracy with current tensor learning methods using only 11 qubits.
The Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) has emerged as a transformative approach in quantum computing, providing a practical means to tackle complex quantum systems. This chapter delves into the essential components and strategies for enhancing VQE performance, focusing on key areas such as hybrid optimization techniques, quantum circuit design, and measurement efficiency. By integrating classical and quantum resources, hybrid optimization methods significantly improve convergence rates while reducing the computational burden on quantum devices. The chapter explores the design of quantum circuits, emphasizing the importance of selecting appropriate variational ansätze to achieve optimal results. Challenges related to Hamiltonian simulation and measurement are critically examined, alongside innovative solutions to mitigate noise and enhance measurement fidelity. Through these comprehensive insights, this chapter aims to illuminate the potential of VQE in advancing quantum machine learning applications across diverse scientific domains.
Quantum machine learning sits at the intersection of quantum computing and artificial intelligence, seeking to exploitquantum mechanical phenomena -- superposition, entanglement, and interference -- to achieve computationaladvantages for learning tasks. This study presents a systematic evaluation of five quantum ML approaches -- variationalquantum classifiers (VQC), quantum kernel methods, quantum reservoir computing, quantum Boltzmann machines, andhybrid quantum-classical neural networks -- benchmarked against classical counterparts on both simulated quantumhardware (up to 30 qubits) and real NISQ devices (IBM Quantum, 27 qubits). Evaluations spanned four task categories:binary classification on structured datasets (6 UCI benchmarks), quantum chemistry property prediction (QM9 molecularenergies), generative modelling (learning probability distributions), and optimisation (Max-Cut on random graphs). A totalof 1,920 experiments were conducted. On classical structured datasets, no quantum method outperformed the bestclassical baseline (XGBoost or SVM) at any problem size accessible to current quantum hardware (up to 30 features),with quantum kernel methods achieving parity at 0.4 +- 0.8% accuracy difference but at 100-1000x higher computationalcost. On quantum chemistry, variational quantum eigensolvers showed a genuine advantage for small molecules (H2,LiH, BeH2): achieving chemical accuracy (1 kcal/mol) with 4-12 qubits where classical methods required exponentiallymore compute for equivalent accuracy. Noise on real NISQ devices degraded all quantum ML methods by 8.4-22.6%relative to noiseless simulation, with error mitigation recovering 42-68% of the noise-induced loss. The quantumadvantage threshold -- the problem size at which quantum methods become faster than classical for equivalent accuracy-- was estimated at 50-100 logical qubits for quantum chemistry and 200+ logical qubits for general ML tasks, placingpractical quantum ML advantage beyond current NISQ capabilities but within plausible reach of fault-tolerant devices. Apractical assessment framework mapping task type, problem structure, and available quantum hardware to expectedquantum advantage is proposed.