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arXiv:2511.16149

Approximation rates of quantum neural networks for periodic functions via Jackson's inequality

Ariel Neufeld, Philipp Schmocker, Viet Khoa Tran

quant-phcs.LGmath.NAstat.MLSubmitted Nov 20, 2025• Announced Nov 21, 2025• 0 citations• Revised Nov 26, 2025 (v2)
v1 · Nov 20, 2025v2 · Nov 26, 2025
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Abstract

Quantum neural networks (QNNs) are an analog of classical neural networks in the world of quantum computing, which are represented by a unitary matrix with trainable parameters. Inspired by the universal approximation property of classical neural networks, ensuring that every continuous function can be arbitrarily well approximated uniformly on a compact set of a Euclidean space, some recent works have established analogous results for QNNs, ranging from single-qubit to multi-qubit QNNs, and even hybrid classical-quantum models. In this paper, we study the approximation capabilities of QNNs for periodic functions with respect to the supremum norm. We use the Jackson inequality to approximate a given function by implementing its approximating trigonometric polynomial via a suitable QNN. In particular, we see that by restricting to the class of periodic functions, one can achieve a quadratic reduction of the number of parameters, producing better approximation results than in the literature. Moreover, the smoother the function, the fewer parameters are needed to construct a QNN to approximate the function.

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Quantum neural networks (QNNs) are an analog of classical neural networks in the world of quantum computing, which are represented by a unitary matrix with trainable parameters. Inspired by the universal approximation property of classical neural networks, ensuring that every continuous function can be arbitrarily well approximated uniformly on a compact set of a Euclidean space, some recent works have established analogous results for QNNs, ranging from single-qubit to multi-qubit QNNs, and even hybrid classical-quantum models. In this paper, we study the approximation capabilities of QNNs for periodic functions with respect to the supremum norm. We use the Jackson inequality to approximate a given function by implementing its approximating trigonometric polynomial via a suitable QNN. In particular, we see that by restricting to the class of periodic functions, one can achieve a quadratic reduction of the number of parameters, producing better approximation results than in the literature. Moreover, the smoother the function, the fewer parameters are needed to construct a QNN to approximate the function.
Quantum neural networks (QNNs) have emerged as a leading strategy to establish applications in machine learning, chemistry, and optimization. While the applications of QNN have been widely investigated, its theoretical foundation remains less understood. In this paper, we formulate a theoretical framework for the expressive ability of data re-uploading quantum neural networks that consist of interleaved encoding circuit blocks and trainable circuit blocks. First, we prove that single-qubit quantum neural networks can approximate any univariate function by mapping the model to a partial Fourier series. We in particular establish the exact correlations between the parameters of the trainable gates and the Fourier coefficients, resolving an open problem on the universal approximation property of QNN. Second, we discuss the limitations of single-qubit native QNNs on approximating multivariate functions by analyzing the frequency spectrum and the flexibility of Fourier coefficients. We further demonstrate the expressivity and limitations of single-qubit native QNNs via numerical experiments. We believe these results would improve our understanding of QNNs and provide a helpful guideline for designing powerful QNNs for machine learning tasks.
Quantum machine learning (QML), as an interdisciplinary field bridging quantum computing and machine learning, has garnered significant attention in recent years. Currently, the field as a whole faces challenges due to incomplete theoretical foundations for the expressivity of quantum neural networks (QNNs). In this paper we propose a constructive QNN model and demonstrate that it possesses the universal approximation property (UAP), which means it can approximate any square-integrable function up to arbitrary accuracy. Furthermore, it supports switching function bases, thus adaptable to various scenarios in numerical approximation and machine learning. Our model has asymptotic advantages over the best classical feed-forward neural networks in terms of circuit size and achieves optimal parameter complexity when approximating Sobolev functions under L2L_2L2​ norm.
Quantum neural networks (QNN) have been proposed as a promising architecture for quantum machine learning. There exist a number of different quantum circuit designs being branded as QNNs, however no clear candidate has presented itself as more suitable than the others. Rather, the search for a ``quantum perceptron" -- the fundamental building block of a QNN -- is still underway. One candidate is quantum perceptrons designed to emulate the nonlinear activation functions of classical perceptrons. Such sigmoid quantum perceptrons (SQPs) inherit the universal approximation property that guarantees that classical neural networks can approximate any function. However, this does not guarantee that QNNs built from SQPs will have any quantum advantage over their classical counterparts. Here we critically investigate both the capabilities and performance of SQP networks by computing their effective dimension and effective capacity, as well as examining their performance on real learning problems. The results are compared to those obtained for other candidate networks which lack activation functions. It is found that simpler, and apparently easier-to-implement parametric quantum circuits actually perform better than SQPs. This indicates that the universal approximation theorem, which a cornerstone of the theory of classical neural networks, is not a relevant criterion for QNNs.
Abstract The field of artificial neural networks is expected to strongly benefit from recent developments of quantum computers. In particular, quantum machine learning, a class of quantum algorithms which exploit qubits for creating trainable neural networks, will provide more power to solve problems such as pattern recognition, clustering and machine learning in general. The building block of feed-forward neural networks consists of one layer of neurons connected to an output neuron that is activated according to an arbitrary activation function. The corresponding learning algorithm goes under the name of Rosenblatt perceptron. Quantum perceptrons with specific activation functions are known, but a general method to realize arbitrary activation functions on a quantum computer is still lacking. Here, we fill this gap with a quantum algorithm which is capable to approximate any analytic activation functions to any given order of its power series. Unlike previous proposals providing irreversible measurement–based and simplified activation functions, here we show how to approximate any analytic function to any required accuracy without the need to measure the states encoding the information. Thanks to the generality of this construction, any feed-forward neural network may acquire the universal approximation properties according to Hornik’s theorem. Our results recast the science of artificial neural networks in the architecture of gate-model quantum computers.
Universal approximation theorems are the foundations of classical neural networks, providing theoretical guarantees that the latter are able to approximate maps of interest. Recent results have shown that this can also be achieved in a quantum setting, whereby classical functions can be approximated by parameterized quantum circuits. We provide here precise error bounds for specific classes of functions and extend these results to the interesting new setup of randomized quantum circuits, mimicking classical reservoir neural networks. Our results show in particular that a quantum neural network with O(ε−2){\mathcal {O}}(\varepsilon ^{-2})O(ε−2) weights and O(⌈log⁡2(ε−1)⌉){\mathcal {O}} (\lceil \log _{2}(\varepsilon ^{-1})\rceil)O(⌈log2​(ε−1)⌉) qubits suffices to achieve approximation error ε>0\varepsilon \gt 0ε>0 when approximating functions with integrable Fourier transforms.
Parameterized quantum circuits (PQCs) have emerged as a promising approach for quantum neural networks. However, understanding their expressive power in accomplishing machine learning tasks remains a crucial question. This paper investigates the expressivity of PQCs for approximating general multivariate function classes. Unlike previous Universal Approximation Theorems for PQCs, which are either nonconstructive or rely on parameterized classical data processing, we explicitly construct data re-uploading PQCs for approximating multivariate polynomials and smooth functions. We establish the first non-asymptotic approximation error bounds for these functions in terms of the number of qubits, quantum circuit depth, and number of trainable parameters. Notably, we demonstrate that for approximating functions that satisfy specific smoothness criteria, the quantum circuit size and number of trainable parameters of our proposed PQCs can be smaller than those of deep ReLU neural networks. We further validate the approximation capability of PQCs through numerical experiments. Our results provide a theoretical foundation for designing practical PQCs and quantum neural networks for machine learning tasks that can be implemented on near-term quantum devices, paving the way for the advancement of quantum machine learning.