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arXiv:2509.06873 · Physical Review Applied

Entanglement and classical simulability in quantum extreme-learning machines

A. De Lorenzis, M. P. Casado, Nicola Lo Gullo, T. Lux, Francesco Plastina, Arnau Riera

Published Apr 23, 2026• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Quantum Machine Learning (QML) has emerged as a promising framework for exploring how quantum dynamics may enhance data processing tasks. Here we investigate Quantum Extreme Learning Machines (QELMs), a quantum analogue of classical Extreme Learning Machines in which training is restricted to the output layer. Our architecture combines dimensionality reduction (via PCA or Autoencoders), quantum state encoding, evolution under an XX Hamiltonian, and projective measurement to produce features for a classical single-layer classifier. By analyzing the classification accuracy as a function of evolution time, we observe a sharp transition between low- and high-accuracy regimes, followed by saturation. Remarkably, the saturated performance is comparable to that obtained using Haar-random unitaries that generate maximally complex dynamics, even though the XX model is integrable and local. Our results indicate that this increase in performance correlates with the onset of entanglement, which improves the embedding of classical data in Hilbert space and leads to more separable clusters in measurement probability space. Thus, moderate entanglement can contribute positively to the structure of the data representation, improving learnability without necessarily implying quantum computational advantage. For the image-classification tasks studied here, namely MNIST, Fashion-MNIST, and CIFAR-10, the relevant evolution time is consistent with information exchange over short distances and, within the explored system sizes, does not show evidence of scaling with the full system size. This suggests that QELM performance in this regime relies only on limited entanglement and remains compatible with efficient classical simulation. Our results clarify how local quantum dynamics and moderate quantum correlations are already sufficient to generate useful feature representations for learning.

DOI
10.1103/891x-ltcy

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Quantum Machine Learning (QML) has emerged as a promising framework for exploring how quantum dynamics may enhance data processing tasks. Here we investigate Quantum Extreme Learning Machines (QELMs), a quantum analogue of classical Extreme Learning Machines in which training is restricted to the output layer. Our architecture combines dimensionality reduction (via PCA or Autoencoders), quantum state encoding, evolution under an XX Hamiltonian, and projective measurement to produce features for a classical single-layer classifier. By analyzing the classification accuracy as a function of evolution time, we observe a sharp transition between low- and high-accuracy regimes, followed by saturation. Remarkably, the saturated performance is comparable to that obtained using Haar-random unitaries that generate maximally complex dynamics, even though the XX model is integrable and local. Our results indicate that this increase in performance correlates with the onset of entanglement, which improves the embedding of classical data in Hilbert space and leads to more separable clusters in measurement probability space. Thus, moderate entanglement can contribute positively to the structure of the data representation, improving learnability without necessarily implying quantum computational advantage. For the image-classification tasks studied here, namely MNIST, Fashion-MNIST, and CIFAR-10, the relevant evolution time is consistent with information exchange over short distances and, within the explored system sizes, does not show evidence of scaling with the full system size. This suggests that QELM performance in this regime relies only on limited entanglement and remains compatible with efficient classical simulation. Our results clarify how local quantum dynamics and moderate quantum correlations are already sufficient to generate useful feature representations for learning.
Quantum Extreme Learning Machine (QELM) is an emerging hybrid quantum machine learning framework that leverages quantum system dynamics to enhance classical models. However, QELM can suffer from the exponential concentration problem, where excessive entanglement reduces model expressivity. In this work, we gain insight into this challenge and demonstrate how tensor network methods specifically, the Time Dependent Variational Principle (TDVP) with Matrix Product States (MPS) can efficiently simulate quantum systems while controlling entanglement and mitigating exponential concentration. Using numerical experiments on the Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology (MNIST) dataset, we show that time-evolving an MPS system modeled as a chain of Rydberg atoms produces high-quality data embeddings with low classical computational overhead. Our findings indicate that exact simulation of quantum dynamics is not necessary for strong machine learning performance; even approximate quantum embeddings can yield competitive results. Furthermore, we observe that both increased disorder in the quantum state achieved by tuning Hamiltonian parameters and careful control of entanglement directly correlate with improved model accuracy, highlighting the importance of these factors in optimizing QELM performance.
Quantum reservoir computers (QRCs) have emerged as a promising approach to quantum machine learning, since they utilize the natural dynamics of quantum systems for data processing and are simple to train. Here, we consider nnn-qubit quantum extreme learning machines (QELMs) with initial-state encoding and continuous-time reservoir dynamics. Applying the Pauli transfer matrix (PTM) formalism reveals the encoding-generated features and their linear transformation by quantum channels, and thereby provides a nonlinear vector autoregression model as an interpretable classical representation of a QELM. We show that the nonlinear information processing capacity of a QELM factorizes into the ability of the encoding to represent a given target function and the decodability of the relevant Pauli features after the effective PTM. Comparing geometric and statistical decodability reveals features that are algebraically hidden yet recoverable through data correlations. We relate the decodability of Pauli features to the spreading of measurement operators under Heisenberg evolution (Krylov growth). Focusing on the unitary channel, we discuss how structured Hamiltonians, when paired with certain observables, can impair model performance, as reflected in a low rank of the readout and the effective PTMs. We trace this effect to Hamiltonian symmetries and derive asymptotic rank estimates for symmetry-resolved observable families. Our decodability analysis disentangles the contributions of encoding, reservoir dynamics, and measurement observables, and thus provides interpretable diagnostics that can inform the design of QELMs and reduce reliance on exhaustive hyperparameter search. As a specific application, we consider forecasting nonlinear dynamical systems and show that the readout of a trained QELM closely matches the expression of the underlying flow map at leading orders.
Interest in quantum machine learning is growing due to its potential to offer more efficient solutions for problems that are difficult to tackle with classical methods. In this context, the research work presented here focuses on the use of quantum machine-learning techniques for image-classification tasks. We exploit a quantum extreme learning machine by taking advantage of its rich feature map provided by the quantum reservoir substrate. We systematically analyze different phases of the quantum extreme learning machine process, from dataset preparation to final image classification. In particular, we test different encodings, together with principal component analysis and the use of autoencoders, and we examine the dynamics of the model through the use of different Hamiltonians for the quantum reservoir. Our results show that the introduction of a quantum reservoir systematically improves the accuracy of the classifier. In addition, our findings indicate that variations in encoding methods can significantly influence performance and that Hamiltonians with distinct structures exhibit the same discrimination rate, depending on how their eigenstates are related to the encoding and measurement basis.
Quantum extreme learning machines (QELMs) are unconventional computing architectures that bear remarkable promise in both classical and quantum machine-learning tasks, such as the estimation of quantum state properties. However, the probabilistic nature of quantum measurements demands extensive repetitions for training to precisely estimate expectation values, imposing stringent trade-offs among experimental resources, acquisition time, and signal-to-noise ratio, particularly for large datasets. Here, we introduce a paradigm shift by training the QELM exclusively with intense classical fields, namely twin beams generated by stimulated emission, while performing inference directly on previously unseen genuine quantum input states to predict their quantum properties. This strategy dramatically reduces acquisition times while substantially enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio. Using frequency-bin encoded biphoton states, implemented here for the first time in a quantum machine learning architecture, we demonstrate entanglement witnessing of two-qubit states with (93 +- 4)% accuracy, multi-dimensional entanglement detection, and learning of the Hamiltonian governing photon-pair generation with a fidelity of (96 +- 4)%. Our results open a new pathway toward faster and more robust training of photonic quantum extreme learning machines for quantum feature extraction.
Reservoir computing leverages rich, non-linear dynamics to process temporal data. Quantum variants promise enhanced expressivity from high-dimensional Hilbert spaces, yet their practical applicability is hindered by hardware noise and concentration effects that can erase input-output distinguishability at large system sizes. In this work, we present and experimentally demonstrate a Quantum Extreme Learning Machine (QELM) tailored to state-of-the-art superconducting platforms, employing up to 124 qubits and circuits with more than 5,000 two-qubit gates on IBM Quantum computers. We introduce a practical multi-objective hyperparameter tuning strategy that jointly monitors observable variability, capacity, and task performance to identify noise-robust operating points. In addition, we develop a local eigentask analysis that enables computationally efficient feature selection and effective information retrieval. We report evidence of a regime of optimality that is identifiable at small scales and transferable across tasks and larger systems, and we achieve performances competitive with leading classical baselines on representative benchmarks for time-series forecasting and satellite image classification. Together, our results establish a viable and robust framework for large-scale, pre-fault-tolerant quantum machine learning and provide a foundation for extending reservoir-based methods to more expressive architectures and real-world scenarios.
Abstract Quantum extreme learning machines (QELMs) have emerged as a promising framework for quantum machine learning. Their appeal lies in the rich feature map induced by the dynamics of a quantum substrate—the quantum reservoir—and the efficient post-measurement training via linear regression. Here, we study the expressivity of QELMs by decomposing the prediction of QELMs into a Fourier series. We show that the achievable Fourier frequencies are determined by the data encoding scheme, while Fourier coefficients depend on both the reservoir and the measurement. Notably, the expressivity of QELMs is fundamentally limited by the number of Fourier frequencies and the number of observables, while the complexity of the prediction hinges on the reservoir. As a cautionary note on scalability, we identify four sources that can lead to the exponential concentration of the observables as the system size grows (randomness, hardware noise, entanglement, and global measurements) and show how this can turn QELMs into useless input-agnostic oracles. In particular, our result on the reservoir-induced concentration strongly indicates that quantum reservoirs drawn from a highly random ensemble make QELM models unscalable. Our analysis elucidates the potential and fundamental limitations of QELMs and lays the groundwork for systematically exploring quantum reservoir systems for other machine learning tasks.