Quantum reservoir computing (QRC) offers a promising paradigm for harnessing quantum systems for machine learning tasks, especially in the era of noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices. While information-theoretical benchmarks like short-term memory capacity (STMC) are widely used to evaluate QRC performance, they fail to provide insights into the physical mechanisms underlying these quantum neural networks. We establish a quantitative connection between the optical absorption spectrum of a quantum reservoir and its memory performance, revealing that optimal STMC aligns directly with maximal absorption, providing a physical explanation for the previously reported "sweet-spot" behavior in QRC performance as a function of dissipation. This connection bridges quantum information theory with experimentally accessible physical properties, opening pathways for targeted engineering of quantum reservoir computers with optimized performance for specific tasks.
Quantum reservoir computing (QRC) offers a promising paradigm for harnessing quantum systems for machine learning tasks, especially in the era of noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices. While information-theoretical benchmarks like short-term memory capacity (STMC) are widely used to evaluate QRC performance, they fail to provide insights into the physical mechanisms underlying these quantum neural networks. We establish a quantitative connection between the optical absorption spectrum of a quantum reservoir and its memory performance, revealing that optimal STMC aligns directly with maximal absorption, providing a physical explanation for the previously reported "sweet-spot" behavior in QRC performance as a function of dissipation. This connection bridges quantum information theory with experimentally accessible physical properties, opening pathways for targeted engineering of quantum reservoir computers with optimized performance for specific tasks.
Quantum computing and neural networks show great promise for the future of information processing. In this paper we study a quantum reservoir computer (QRC), a framework harnessing quantum dynamics and designed for fast and efficient solving of temporal machine learning tasks such as speech recognition, time series prediction and natural language processing. Specifically, we study memory capacity and accuracy of a quantum reservoir computer based on the fully connected transverse field Ising model by investigating different forms of inter-spin interactions and computing timescales. We show that variation in inter-spin interactions leads to a better memory capacity in general, by engineering the type of interactions the capacity can be greatly enhanced and there exists an optimal timescale at which the capacity is maximized. To connect computational capabilities to physical properties of the underlaying system, we also study the out-of-time-ordered correlator and find that its faster decay implies a more accurate memory. Furthermore, as an example application on real world data, we use QRC to predict stock values.
Quantum reservoir computing (QRC) harnesses driven quantum dynamics for time-series processing, yet the mechanisms behind the differing performance levels across its many implementations remain unclear. We show that apparently unrelated approaches-including memory restriction, weak measurements, operation near the edge of quantum chaos, and dissipative dynamics-are in fact governed by the same underlying principle, namely a tunable balance between memory retention and nonlinear response. Using the information processing capacity, a dynamical measure from nonlinear systems theory, we place these behaviors in a unified framework and identify the regimes in which quantum reservoirs surpass the standard protocol. Our results reveal a fundamental connection between memory and nonlinear response. This provides a general design principle for enhanced information processing and enables systematic analysis and optimization inspired by classical dynamical quantifiers.
Quantum reservoir computing (QRC) has emerged as a promising paradigm for harnessing near-term quantum devices to tackle temporal machine learning tasks. Yet, identifying the mechanisms that underlie enhanced performance remains challenging, particularly in many-body open systems where nonlinear interactions and dissipation intertwine in complex ways. Here, we investigate a minimal model of a driven-dissipative quantum reservoir described by two coupled Kerr-nonlinear oscillators, an experimentally realizable platform that features controllable coupling, intrinsic nonlinearity, and tunable photon loss. Using Partial Information Decomposition (PID), we examine how different dynamical regimes encode input drive signals in terms of redundancy (information shared by each oscillator) and synergy (information accessible only through their joint observation). Our key results show that, near a critical point marking a dynamical bifurcation, the system transitions from predominantly redundant to synergistic encoding. We further demonstrate that synergy amplifies short-term responsiveness, thereby enhancing immediate memory retention, whereas strong dissipation leads to more redundant encoding that supports long-term memory retention. These findings elucidate how the interplay of instability and dissipation shapes information processing in small quantum systems, providing a fine-grained, information-theoretic perspective for analyzing and designing QRC platforms.
In the field of quantum reservoir computing (QRC), many different computational models and architectures have been proposed. From these models, we identify feedback-based models -- which use a feedback mechanism to re-embed classical measurements from the QRC -- and recurrent models -- which use a multi-register approach with memory and readout qubits -- as the two major competing architectures that have been discussed and validated on hardware. In this paper, we advance upon the recurrent architectures, which employ a two register approach to endow the QRC with a fading memory. While these approaches have been validated on hardware and have demonstrated great real-world performance on noisy-intermediate-scale-quantum (NISQ) quantum processing units (QPUs), the exact mechanism through which the memory capacity arises is not completely understood or fully controllable. With this, we augment the recurrent approaches and present a hardware-realizable mechanism, which we call a tunable partial-SWAP, that allows for the direct control of the rate of memory dissipation from a QRN implemented on a gate-based QPU. The theory behind this mechanism is discussed in terms of a controlled amplitude-damping channel and validation experiments using a randomized short-term memory capacity (STMC) recall benchmark and the NARMA-5 dataset are conducted using simulation and IBM QPUs, respectively.
[eng] Quantum technologies are rapidly evolving toward regimes where controllable quantum dynamics can be exploited for information processing, simulation, and machine learning. Within this landscape, quantum reservoir computing (QRC) has emerged as an appealing paradigm: it harnesses the high-dimensional dynamics of quantum systems to perform temporal tasks with minimal training overhead, making it particularly well suited for current noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices. In parallel, modern perspectives on quantum many-body systems reveal that tools such as complex-network theory and spectral methods can uncover structures in quantum states and dynamics that remain hidden to conventional approaches. This thesis brings these threads together. It explores how quantum statistics, many-body correlations, chaoticity, and metastability shape information processing in QRC. Furthermore, we have also demonstrated how network-theoretic methods can reveal new features of strongly correlated phases. This thesis contributes to the emerging field of quantum reservoir computing by examining how different physical models shape the learning capabilities of quantum reservoirs. Each article investigates a distinct class of systems: simple hopping networks governed by particle statistics, interacting atomic lattices described by the Bose–Hubbard model, driven-dissipative oscillators exhibiting metastability. Through these diverse settings, a central goal is to identify which physical ingredients enhance the performance of QRC. To address these questions, we combine analytical insights with a broad range of numerical techniques, including exact diagonalization, tensor-network simulations, and open-system dynamics. Together, these approaches provide a unified framework for understanding how quantum dynamics can be exploited for computation. The main findings of the thesis on QRC and complex networks can be summarized as follows. (i) Particle statistics fundamentally shape computational power: fermions exhibit superior information spreading due to their algebra, while bosons can outperform all other substrates when input encoding is optimized. (ii) Metastability constitutes a computational resource: long-lived metastable states enhance memory capacity and allow a fast-injection protocol. (iii) In atomic lattices described by the Bose–Hubbard model, QRC performance is governed by the interplay between interactions and tunneling, with optimal regimes appearing both in the weakly interacting limit and near the onset of quantum chaos; importantly, disorder is not required to achieve high performance. (iv) Complex-network analysis reveals hidden features of the Kitaev chain: network observables sharply detect the topological transition in the Kitaev chain and uncover a previously unnoticed fully connected, perfectly clustered regime linked to ground-state factorization observed in the Ising spin chain.
Quantum reservoir computing (QRC) is a low-complexity learning paradigm that combines the inherent dynamics of input-driven many-body quantum systems with classical learning techniques for nonlinear temporal data processing. Optimizing the QRC process and computing device is a complex task due to the dependence of many-body quantum systems on various factors. To explore this, we introduce a strongly interacting spin model on random regular graphs as the quantum component and investigate the interplay between static disorder, interactions, and graph connectivity, revealing their critical impact on quantum memory capacity and learnability accuracy. We tackle linear quantum and nonlinear classical tasks, and identify optimal learning and memory regimes through studying information localization, dynamical quantum correlations, and the many-body structure of the disordered Hamiltonian. In particular, we uncover the role of previously overlooked network connectivity and demonstrate how the presence of quantum correlations can significantly enhance the learning performance. Our findings thus provide guidelines for the optimal design of disordered analog quantum learning platforms.