Abstract Quantum state discrimination (QSD) is a fundamental task in quantum information processing with numerous applications. We present a variational quantum algorithm that performs the minimum-error QSD, called the variational quantum state discriminator (VQSD). The VQSD uses a parameterized quantum circuit that is trained by minimizing a cost function derived from the QSD, and finds the optimal positive-operator valued measure (POVM) for distinguishing target quantum states. The VQSD is capable of discriminating even unknown states, eliminating the need for expensive quantum state tomography. Our numerical simulations and comparisons with semidefinite programming demonstrate the effectiveness of the VQSD in finding optimal POVMs for minimum-error QSD of both pure and mixed states. In addition, the VQSD can be utilized as a supervised machine learning algorithm for multi-class classification. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve obtained in numerical simulations with the Iris flower dataset ranges from 0.97 to 1 with an average of 0.985, demonstrating excellent performance of the VQSD classifier.
Abstract Quantum state discrimination (QSD) is a fundamental task in quantum information processing with numerous applications. We present a variational quantum algorithm that performs the minimum-error QSD, called the variational quantum state discriminator (VQSD). The VQSD uses a parameterized quantum circuit that is trained by minimizing a cost function derived from the QSD, and finds the optimal positive-operator valued measure (POVM) for distinguishing target quantum states. The VQSD is capable of discriminating even unknown states, eliminating the need for expensive quantum state tomography. Our numerical simulations and comparisons with semidefinite programming demonstrate the effectiveness of the VQSD in finding optimal POVMs for minimum-error QSD of both pure and mixed states. In addition, the VQSD can be utilized as a supervised machine learning algorithm for multi-class classification. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve obtained in numerical simulations with the Iris flower dataset ranges from 0.97 to 1 with an average of 0.985, demonstrating excellent performance of the VQSD classifier.
Abstract One-class classification (OCC) is a fundamental problem in pattern recognition with a wide range of applications. This work presents a semi-supervised quantum machine learning algorithm for such a problem, which we call a variational quantum one-class classifier (VQOCC). The algorithm is suitable for noisy intermediate-scale quantum computing because the VQOCC trains a fully-parameterized quantum autoencoder with a normal dataset and does not require decoding. The performance of the VQOCC is compared with that of the one-class support vector machine (OC-SVM), the kernel principal component analysis (PCA), and the deep convolutional autoencoder (DCAE) using handwritten digit and Fashion-MNIST datasets. The numerical experiment examined various structures of VQOCC by varying data encoding, the number of parameterized quantum circuit layers, and the size of the latent feature space. The benchmark shows that the classification performance of VQOCC is comparable to that of OC-SVM and PCA, although the number of model parameters grows only logarithmically with the data size. The quantum algorithm outperformed DCAE in most cases under similar training conditions. Therefore, our algorithm constitutes an extremely compact and effective machine learning model for OCC.
In the problem of quantum channel discrimination, one distinguishes between a given number of quantum channels, which is done by sending an input state through a channel and measuring the output state. This work studies applications of variational quantum circuits and machine-learning techniques for discriminating such channels. In particular, we explore (i) the practical implementation of embedding this task into the framework of variational quantum computing, (ii) training a quantum classifier based on variational quantum circuits, and (iii) applying the quantum kernel estimation technique. For testing these three channel discrimination approaches, we considered a pair of entanglement-breaking channels and the depolarizing channel with two different depolarization factors. For the approach (i), we address solving the quantum channel discrimination problem using widely discussed parallel and sequential strategies. We show the advantage of the latter in terms of better convergence with less quantum resources. Quantum channel discrimination with a variational quantum classifier (ii) allows one to operate even with random and mixed input states and simple variational circuits. The kernel-based classification approach (iii) is also found effective as it allows one to discriminate depolarizing channels associated not with just fixed values of the depolarization factor, but with ranges of it. Additionally, we discovered that a simple modification of one of the commonly used kernels significantly increases the efficiency of this approach. Finally, our numerical findings reveal that the performance of variational methods of channel discrimination depends on the trace of the product of the output states. These findings demonstrate that quantum machine learning can be used to discriminate channels, such as those representing physical noise processes.
Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVM) play a vital role in using quantum resources for supervised machine learning tasks, such as classification. However, current methods are strongly limited in terms of scalability on Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices. In this work, we propose a novel approach called the Variational Quantum Linear Solver (VQLS) enhanced QSVM. This is built upon our idea of utilizing the variational quantum linear solver to solve system of linear equations of a Least Squares-SVM on a NISQ device. The implementation of our approach is evaluated by an extensive series of numerical experiments with the Iris dataset, which consists of three distinct iris plant species. Based on this, we explore the effectiveness of our algorithm by constructing a classifier capable of classification in a feature space ranging from one to seven dimensions. Furthermore, we exploit both classical and quantum computing for various subroutines of our algorithm, and effectively mitigate challenges associated with the implementation. These include significant improvement in the trainability of the variational ansatz and notable reductions in run-time for cost calculations. Based on the numerical experiments, our approach exhibits the capability of identifying a separating hyperplane in an 8-dimensional feature space. Moreover, it consistently demonstrated strong performance across various instances with the same dataset.
Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVM) play a vital role in using quantum resources for supervised machine learning tasks, such as classification. However, current methods are strongly limited in terms of scalability on Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices. In this work, we propose a novel approach called the Variational Quantum Linear Solver (VQLS) enhanced QSVM. This is built upon our idea of utilizing the variational quantum linear solver to solve system of linear equations of a least squares-SVM on a NISQ device. The implementation of our approach is evaluated by an extensive series of numerical experiments with the Iris dataset, which consists of three distinct iris plant species. Based on this, we explore the practicality and effectiveness of our algorithm by constructing a classifier capable of classification in a feature space ranging from one to seven dimensions. Furthermore, by strategically exploiting both classical and quantum computing for various subroutines of our algorithm, we effectively mitigate practical challenges associated with the implementation. These include significant improvement in the trainability of the variational ansatz and notable reductions in run-time for cost calculations. Based on the numerical experiments, our approach exhibits the capability of identifying a separating hyperplane in an 8-dimensional feature space. Moreover, it consistently demonstrated strong performance across various instances with the same dataset.
Abstract A kernel-based quantum classifier is the most interesting and powerful quantum machine learning technique for hyperlinear classification of complex data, which can be easily realized in shallow-depth quantum circuits such as a SWAP test classifier. A variational quantum approximate support vector machine (VQASVM) can be realized inherently and explicitly on these circuits by introduction of a variational scheme to map the quadratic optimization problem of the support vector machine theory to a quantum-classical variational optimization problem. Probability weight modulation in index qubits of a classifier can designate support vectors among training vectors, which can be achieved with a parameterized quantum circuit (PQC). The classical parameters of PQC is then transferred to many copies of other decision inference circuits. Our VQASVM algorithm is experimented with toy example data sets on cloud-based quantum machines for feasibility evaluation, and numerically investigated to evaluate its performance on a standard iris flower and MNIST data set. The empirical run-time complexity of VQASVM is estimated to be sub-quadratic on the training data set size, while that of the classical solver is quadratic.
With the rapid development of quantum technology, understanding the properties of entanglement states has become an urgent task.Various classifications of entanglement states have been proposed to cater to distinct quantum applications, highlighting the significance of entanglement classification. This paper presents a variational quantum classifier for entanglement classification discrimination which can effectively reduce the measurement resources, specifically for four-qubit entanglement equivalence classifications under SLOCC (Stochastic Local Operations and Classical Communication). Through training one-to-one and one-to-many models, our proposed method achieves excellent performance in the entanglement classification. We further investigate the impact of parameterized quantum circuit layers and various measurement settings on the classifier’s performance. Considering the inherent noise present in near-term quantum computers, we also analyze how noise affects the model’s performance. Moreover, we explore the classifier’s capabilities in the context of multi-qubit entanglement systems. Numerical simulations demonstrate that high-precision entanglement classification tasks can be accomplished with shallow circuit depths, and the model exhibits resilience to noise. Additionally, the results reveal the versatility and potential application of our proposed model in larger-scale quantum systems by effectively handling entanglement classification tasks involving an increased number of qubits.