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arXiv:2406.17292 · Quantum

Ideal stochastic process modeling with post-quantum quasiprobabilistic theories

Kelvin Onggadinata, Andrew Tanggara, Mile Gu, Dagomir Kaszlikowski

Published Feb 23, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

In stochastic modeling, the excess entropy – the mutual information shared between a process's past and future – represents the fundamental lower bound of the memory needed to simulate its dynamics. However, this bound cannot be saturated by either classical machines or their enhanced quantum counterparts. Simulating a process fundamentally requires us to store more information in the present than is shared between the past and the future. Here, we consider a generalization of hidden Markov models beyond classical and quantum models, referred to as n-machines, that allow for negative quasiprobabilities. We show that under the collision entropy measure of information, the minimal memory of such models can equal the excess entropy. Our results suggest that negativity can be a useful resource for achieving nonclassical memory advantage.

DOI
10.22331/q-2026-02-23-2005

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In stochastic modeling, the excess entropy – the mutual information shared between a process's past and future – represents the fundamental lower bound of the memory needed to simulate its dynamics. However, this bound cannot be saturated by either classical machines or their enhanced quantum counterparts. Simulating a process fundamentally requires us to store more information in the present than is shared between the past and the future. Here, we consider a generalization of hidden Markov models beyond classical and quantum models, referred to as n-machines, that allow for negative quasiprobabilities. We show that under the collision entropy measure of information, the minimal memory of such models can equal the excess entropy. Our results suggest that negativity can be a useful resource for achieving nonclassical memory advantage.
Abstract Continuous-time stochastic processes pervade everyday experience, and the simulation of models of these processes is of great utility. Classical models of systems operating in continuous-time must typically track an unbounded amount of information about past behaviour, even for relatively simple models, enforcing limits on precision due to the finite memory of the machine. However, quantum machines can require less information about the past than even their optimal classical counterparts to simulate the future of discrete-time processes, and we demonstrate that this advantage extends to the continuous-time regime. Moreover, we show that this reduction in the memory requirement can be unboundedly large, allowing for arbitrary precision even with a finite quantum memory. We provide a systematic method for finding superior quantum constructions, and a protocol for analogue simulation of continuous-time renewal processes with a quantum machine.
Isolating past information relevant for future prediction is central to quantitative science. Quantum models offer a promising approach, enabling statistically faithful modeling while using less past information than any classical counterpart. Here we introduce a class of phase-enhanced quantum models, representing the most general means of simulating a stochastic process unitarily in causal order. The resulting constructions surpass previous state-of-art methods---both in reducing the information they need to store about the past and in the minimal memory dimension they require to store this information. Moreover, these two features are generally competing factors in optimization---leading to an ambiguity in optimal modeling that is unique to the quantum regime. Our results simultaneously offer quantum advantages for stochastic simulation and illustrate further qualitative differences between classical and quantum notions of complexity.
Quantum machine learning models define probabilistic input--output maps through coherent quantum evolution and measurement. While such models can exhibit computational advantages, their internal functioning and decision making generally resists interpretation in terms of stochastic trajectories through intermediate configurations. In contrast to classical (Markovian) stochastic processes, quantum dynamics generically violates the Chapman--Kolmogorov divisibility condition, preventing a decomposition into probabilistically meaningful intermediate transitions. We develop a probabilistic framework for representing quantum learning models as stochastic processes over configuration spaces where the dynamics are modeled as linear maps on probability distributions. Starting from a fixed POVM, arbitrary quantum channels induce transition kernels on the associated probability representation. For informationally complete POVMs, and in particular SIC-POVMs, these kernels are Markovian but generally quasi-stochastic, with non-classicality appearing as negativity. By contrast, projective spaces admit positive stochastic kernels but generally require non-Markovian dynamics due to the failure of Chapman--Kolmogorov divisibility. This yields a trade-off between negativity and dependence on past configurations, i.e. quantum dynamics can be represented either by Markovian quasi-stochastic maps or by positive stochastic processes with higher Markov order. We discuss how such representations of quantum dynamics can be interpreted as stochastic walks through a memory space in the spirit of Projective Simulation, a model of learning and agency in which decisions arise from random walks over an episodic memory network. We further outline how finite-order stochastic kernels can approximate such quantum deliberation processes and show in what regimes the classical machine learning model is recovered.
To make sense of the world around us, we develop models, constructed to enable us to replicate, describe, and explain the behaviours we see. Focusing on the broad case of sequences of correlated random variables, i.e., classical stochastic processes, we tackle the question of determining whether or not two different models produce the same observable behavior. This is the problem of identifiability. Curiously, the physics of the model need not correspond to the physics of the observations; recent work has shown that it is even advantageous -- in terms of memory and thermal efficiency -- to employ quantum models to generate classical stochastic processes. We resolve the identifiability problem in this regime, providing a means to compare any two models of a classical process, be the models classical, quantum, or `post-quantum', by mapping them to a canonical `generalized' hidden Markov model. Further, this enables us to place (sometimes tight) bounds on the minimal dimension required of a quantum model to generate a given classical stochastic process.
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.
Mathematical models use information from past observations to generate predictions about the future. If two models make identical predictions the one that needs less information from the past to do this is preferred. It is already known that certain classical models (certain Hidden Markov Models called ε-machines which are often optimal classical models) are not in general the preferred ones. We extend this result and show that even optimal classical models (models with minimal internal entropy) in general are not the best possible models (called ideal models). Instead of optimal classical models we can construct quantum models which are significantly better but not yet the best possible ones (i.e. they have a strictly smaller internal entropy). In this paper we show conditions when the internal entropies between classical models and specific quantum models coincide. Furthermore it turns out that this situation appears very rarely. An example shows that our results hold only for the specific quantum model construction and in general not for alternative constructions. Furthermore another example shows that classical models with minimal internal entropy need not to be related to quantum models with minimal internal entropy.