We develop a quantum topological data analysis (QTDA) protocol based on the estimation of the density of states (DOS) of the combinatorial Laplacian. Computing topological features of graphs and simplicial complexes is crucial for analyzing data sets and building explainable artificial intelligence solutions. This task becomes computationally hard for simplicial complexes with over 60 vertices and high-degree topological features due to a combinatorial scaling. We propose to approach the task by embedding underlying hypergraphs as effective quantum Hamiltonians and evaluating their density of states from the time evolution. Specifically, we compose propagators as quantum circuits using the Cartan decomposition of effective Hamiltonians and sample overlaps of time-evolved states using multifidelity protocols. Next we develop various postprocessing routines and implement a Fourier-like transform to recover the rank (and kernel) of Hamiltonians. This enables us to estimate the Betti numbers, revealing the topological features of simplicial complexes. We test our protocol on noiseless and noisy quantum simulators and run examples on IBM quantum processors. We observe the resilience of the proposed QTDA approach to real-hardware noise even in the absence of error mitigation, showing the promise for near-term device implementations and highlighting the utility of global DOS-based estimators. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We develop a quantum topological data analysis (QTDA) protocol based on the estimation of the density of states (DOS) of the combinatorial Laplacian. Computing topological features of graphs and simplicial complexes is crucial for analyzing data sets and building explainable artificial intelligence solutions. This task becomes computationally hard for simplicial complexes with over 60 vertices and high-degree topological features due to a combinatorial scaling. We propose to approach the task by embedding underlying hypergraphs as effective quantum Hamiltonians and evaluating their density of states from the time evolution. Specifically, we compose propagators as quantum circuits using the Cartan decomposition of effective Hamiltonians and sample overlaps of time-evolved states using multifidelity protocols. Next we develop various postprocessing routines and implement a Fourier-like transform to recover the rank (and kernel) of Hamiltonians. This enables us to estimate the Betti numbers, revealing the topological features of simplicial complexes. We test our protocol on noiseless and noisy quantum simulators and run examples on IBM quantum processors. We observe the resilience of the proposed QTDA approach to real-hardware noise even in the absence of error mitigation, showing the promise for near-term device implementations and highlighting the utility of global DOS-based estimators. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Topological data analysis (TDA) is a rapidly growing area that applies techniques from algebraic topology to extract robust features from large-scale data. A key task in TDA is the estimation of (normalized) Betti numbers, which capture essential topological invariants. While recent work has led to quantum algorithms for this problem, we explore an alternative direction: combining classical and quantum resources to estimate the Betti numbers of a simplicial complex more efficiently. Assuming the classical description of a simplicial complex, that is, its set of vertices and edges, we propose a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm. The classical component enumerates all simplices, and this combinatorial structure is subsequently processed by a quantum algorithm to estimate the Betti numbers. We analyze the performance of our approach and identify regimes where it potentially achieves polynomial to exponential speedups over existing quantum methods, at the trade-off of using more ancilla qubits. We further demonstrate the utility of normalized Betti numbers in concrete applications, highlighting the broader potential of hybrid quantum algorithms in topological data analysis.
Topological data analysis (TDA) provides a powerful framework for extracting information about the shape of complex, unstructured data, but the classical cost of computing high dimensional topological features limits its application. Quantum algorithms for TDA offer a route around this bottleneck, yet existing approaches typically focus on exact or high precision Betti number estimation, making the regime for practical quantum advantage appear narrow. Here, we instead frame quantum TDA as a feature-extraction method for downstream data analysis by extracting low-order spectral information from the combinatorial Laplacian as a proxy for high-dimensional topology.
We support this perspective from both the application and algorithmic sides. First, we show that higher-order TDA features improve predictive performance in two time-series applications: functional MRI analysis for neurodegenerative disease classification and financial time-series analysis for identifying market instability. Second, we develop a moment-based quantum algorithm and show that low-order moments, including the relative trace, are strongly correlated with high-dimensional Betti information, even when the relative Betti number is small. Finally, we present circuit constructions, resource estimates, quantum-classical crossover projections, and experimental results from a Barium development system similar to the forthcoming IonQ Tempo line, extracting Laplacian-derived observables from graph instances and quantitatively comparing them with exact Betti information.
Together, these results establish quantum TDA as a practical approach for extracting topological features from classically challenging data
Abstract: Quantum Topological Data Analysis (QTDA) is introduced as a hybrid classical–quantum methodology for accelerating persistent homology on complex manifolds while preserving topological interpretability. The approach encodes simplicial complexes into quantum states, applies boundary operators via unitary transforms, and estimates invariants with variational and linear‑algebraic quantum routines. An end‑to‑end pipeline is formalized that couples deep representation learning with quantum‑assisted homological primitives, yielding stable persistence diagrams aligned with structural robustness. Experiments on synthetic and semi‑synthetic filtrations quantify latency, scaling, and stability, showing empirical reductions in runtime growth under modest qubit budgets. The results indicate that QTDA enables time‑critical analytics such as anomaly detection and manifold clustering, while meeting explainability and governance requirements through auditable topological summaries. Keywords Quantum Topological Data Analysis, persistent homology, Betti numbers, simplicial complexes, variational quantum algorithms, manifold learning, interpretability, auditability
Prior work has explored quantum algorithms for topological data analysis (TDA), revealing the possibility of exponential quantum speedups in estimating the ratios of Betti numbers to the dimension of the combinatorial Laplacian. However, this quantity is only non-vanishing and efficient-to-quantumly-estimate when Betti numbers are exponentially large, a case for which concrete examples are rarely known. Furthermore, certain randomized classical algorithms are sometimes efficient in this regime. Thus, the prospect of achieving quantum advantage in conventional TDA appears fairly narrow. Here, we address these challenges to the quantum advantage in TDA by developing quantum algorithms for Mayer homology, which generalize simplicial homology to N-nilpotent boundary operators (∂N=0) and have recently been successfully applied to real-world TDA contexts. We introduce an efficient quantum algorithm for estimating Mayer Betti numbers and their persistent counterparts. We then prove that for high-order simplices, Mayer Betti numbers are often exponentially large in the dense regime, which ameliorates the normalization bottleneck of conventional quantum TDA. In the same regime, we argue that existing dequantization algorithms developed for conventional TDA, when applied to Mayer homology, generally lose theoretical guaranties, facing certain structural barriers that prevent their practical utilities. We also provide logical resource estimates revealing that a quantum computer with roughly a few hundred qubits and sixty million Toffoli gates could solve Mayer homology problems beyond the capabilities of known classical approaches. Finally, we discuss real-world applications of Mayer homology in genomics, supersymmetry, drug discovery, and neuroscience, revealing the potential of our quantum algorithm to deliver real-world impacts via Mayer homology.
Topological data analysis (TDA) is an emergent field of data analysis. The critical step of TDA is computing the persistent Betti numbers. Existing classical algorithms for TDA are limited if we want to learn from high-dimensional topological features because the number of high-dimensional simplices grows exponentially in the size of the data. In the context of quantum computation, it has been previously shown that there exists an efficient quantum algorithm for estimating the Betti numbers even in high dimensions. However, the Betti numbers are less general than the persistent Betti numbers, and there have been no quantum algorithms that can estimate the persistent Betti numbers of arbitrary dimensions. This paper shows the first quantum algorithm that can estimate the (normalized) persistent Betti numbers of arbitrary dimensions. Our algorithm is efficient for simplicial complexes such as the Vietoris-Rips complex and demonstrates exponential speedup over the known classical algorithms.
This work investigates whether quantum walks on simplicial complexes exhibit quantum advantages. We introduce a novel quantum walk that encodes the combinatorial Laplacian, a key object reflecting the topology of the simplicial complex. We construct a unitary encoding projecting onto the kernel of the Laplacian, representing the harmonic cycles in the complex's homology. Our efficient construction of quantum walk unitaries for clique complexes paves the way for exploring higher-order interactions within topological structures. Our construction requires O ( n 3 log ( 1 / ϵ ) / λ k ) gates, where n is the number of vertices, λ k is the smallest non-zero eigenvalue of the Laplacian, and ϵ is the projection error. Our results indicate apparent superpolynomial quantum speedup with quantum walks, without quantum oracles, provided the spectral gap of the Laplacian is inverse-polynomially bounded and efficient simplex sampling is available.Crucially, the walk operates on a state space encompassing both positively and negatively oriented simplices, effectively doubling its size compared to unoriented approaches. Through coherent interference of these paired simplices, we are able to successfully encode the combinatorial Laplacian, which would otherwise be impossible. This is our major technical contribution. We also extend the framework by constructing variant quantum walks that enable us to: (1) estimate normalized persistent Betti numbers throughout a deformation process, (2) verify a specific QMA 1 -hard problem related to clique complex homology, showcasing potential applications in computational complexity theory, and (3) solve the high-dimensional discrete Dirichlet problem (HDDP), generalizing the classical discrete Dirichlet problem on graphs to simplicial complexes, with an apparent superpolynomial speedup over the best known classical algorithm.