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arXiv:2506.09425

Local surrogates for quantum machine learning

Sreeraj Nair, Christopher Ferrie

Published Feb 24, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Abstract Surrogates have been proposed as classical simulations of the pretrained quantum learning models, which are capable of mimicking the input-output relation inherent in the quantum model. Quantum hardware within this framework is used for training and for generating the classical surrogates. Inference is relegated to the classical surrogate, hence alleviating the extra quantum computational cost once training is done. Taking inspiration from interpretable models, we introduce a local surrogation protocol based on reuploading-type quantum learning models, including local quantum surrogates as cost-efficient intermediate quantum learning models. When the training and inference are only concerned with a subregion of the data space, deploying a local quantum surrogate offers qubit cost reductions and the downstream local classical surrogate achieves dequantization of the inference phase. Several numerical experiments are presented.

DOI
10.21203/rs.3.rs-7324172/v1

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Abstract Surrogates have been proposed as classical simulations of the pretrained quantum learning models, which are capable of mimicking the input-output relation inherent in the quantum model. Quantum hardware within this framework is used for training and for generating the classical surrogates. Inference is relegated to the classical surrogate, hence alleviating the extra quantum computational cost once training is done. Taking inspiration from interpretable models, we introduce a local surrogation protocol based on reuploading-type quantum learning models, including local quantum surrogates as cost-efficient intermediate quantum learning models. When the training and inference are only concerned with a subregion of the data space, deploying a local quantum surrogate offers qubit cost reductions and the downstream local classical surrogate achieves dequantization of the inference phase. Several numerical experiments are presented.
The advent of noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers has put the search for possible applications to the forefront of quantum information science. One area where hopes for an advantage through near-term quantum computers are high is quantum machine learning, where variational quantum learning models based on parametrized quantum circuits are discussed. In this work, we introduce the concept of a classical surrogate, a classical model which can be efficiently obtained from a trained quantum learning model and reproduces its input-output relations. As inference can be performed classically, the existence of a classical surrogate greatly enhances the applicability of a quantum learning strategy. However, the classical surrogate also challenges possible advantages of quantum schemes. As it is possible to directly optimize the Ansatz of the classical surrogate, they create a natural benchmark the quantum model has to outperform. We show that large classes of well-analyzed reuploading models have a classical surrogate. We conducted numerical experiments and found that these quantum models show no advantage in performance or trainability in the problems we analyze. This leaves only generalization capability as a possible point of quantum advantage and emphasizes the dire need for a better understanding of inductive biases of quantum learning models.
The advent of noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers has put the search for possible applications to the forefront of quantum information science. One area where hopes for an advantage through near-term quantum computers are high is quantum machine learning, where variational quantum learning models based on parametrized quantum circuits are discussed. In this work, we introduce the concept of a classical surrogate, a classical model which can be efficiently obtained from a trained quantum learning model and reproduces its input-output relations. As inference can be performed classically, the existence of a classical surrogate greatly enhances the applicability of a quantum learning strategy. However, the classical surrogate also challenges possible advantages of quantum schemes. As it is possible to directly optimize the Ansatz of the classical surrogate, they create a natural benchmark the quantum model has to outperform. We show that large classes of well-analyzed reuploading models have a classical surrogate. We conducted numerical experiments and found that these quantum models show no advantage in performance or trainability in the problems we analyze. This leaves only generalization capability as a possible point of quantum advantage and emphasizes the dire need for a better understanding of inductive biases of quantum learning models.
A key bottleneck in quantum machine learning is the computational cost of repeated quantum circuit evaluations during the inference phase. To address this, we present a framework for constructing fast, cheap, provably accurate classical tensor-train surrogates of fully trained quantum machine learning models within local patches of their input data space. The approach combines Taylor polynomial approximation with a tensor-train (TT) representation and embeds it in a statistical learning paradigm via empirical risk minimization. In our analysis, the Taylor-TT construction serves as a deterministic error certificate proving that the TT hypothesis class contains a good approximation; empirical risk minimization then provably recovers a surrogate with controlled generalization error and explicit bounds. This translates into three independently controllable error sources: (i) Taylor truncation error controlled by the patch radius rrr and polynomial degree ppp, (ii) TT approximation error controlled by the bond dimension χχχ, and (iii) statistical estimation error. While the parameter count scales polynomially in the number of data dimensions NNN, i.e., deff=N(p+1)χ2d_{\mathrm{eff}} = N(p+1)χ^2deff​=N(p+1)χ2 rather than the naive (p+1)N(p+1)^N(p+1)N, the worst-case constants inherit an exponential factor through the tensor-product feature norm during Taylor polynomial embedding onto TT. This cleanly separates representation complexity from feature-induced constants. Our risk bounds and sample complexity depend explicitly on the local patch radius rrr.
Dequantization of quantum machine learning models is the methodology of creating an equivalent classical model using a partial Fourier series over the classical input variables such that the classical model can be efficiently run on a classical computer whilst being as accurate as its quantum counterpart. In this paper, we present an experimental validation of the dequantization of quantum machine learning models using realworld WiFi localization dataset. The classical surrogate model necessitates the same amount order-of-magnitude parameters in the worst case without any statistically significant reduction in accuracy. At the same time, it demonstrates the usefulness of quantum machine learning to obtain an efficient and accurate classical model for classification and regression tasks.
Abstract Quantum machine learning (QML) presents potential for early industrial adoption, yet limited access to quantum hardware remains a significant bottleneck for deployment of QML solutions. This work explores the use of classical surrogates to bypass this restriction, which is a technique that allows to build a lightweight classical representation of a (trained) quantum model, enabling to perform inference on entirely classical devices. We reveal prohibitive high computational demand associated with previously proposed methods for generating classical surrogates from quantum models, and propose an alternative pipeline enabling generation of classical surrogates at a larger scale than was previously possible. Previous methods required at least a high-performance computing (HPC) system for quantum models of below industrial scale (ca. 20 qubits), which raises questions about its practicality. We greatly minimize the redundancies of the previous approach, utilizing only a minute fraction of the resources previously needed. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on a real-world energy demand forecasting problem, conducting rigorous testing of performance and computation demand in both simulations and on quantum hardware. Our results indicate that our method achieves high accuracy on the testing dataset while its computational resource requirements scale polynomially rather than exponentially. This work presents a lightweight approach to transform quantum solutions into classically deployable versions, facilitating faster integration of quantum technology in industrial settings. Furthermore, it can serve as a powerful research tool in search of a practical quantum advantage in an empirical setup.
For quantum machine learning, the exact boundary between classical and quantum advantage is still poorly understood. Direct comparison between quantum neural networks (QNNs) and existing classical models, which encompass fundamentally different function classes, often fails to provide broader insight into the difference between the two. Inspired by the techniques of Neural Quantum States and Random Fourier Features, this work introduces Neural Fourier Surrogates (NFS), a stochastic classical neural network architecture for efficiently learning coefficients over the same finite Fourier series support as quantum neural networks. Testing on a selection of tabular benchmark datasets, we find that NFS is an effective classifier architecture broadly competitive with established classical baselines, including a comparable Random Fourier Features model, and possessing comparable performance to data-reuploading QNNs; combined with additional analysis comparing the learned Fourier spectra of QNNs and NFS on synthetic data, these results establish NFS as a natural classical baseline for evaluating QNN performance.