Quantum computing has long promised transformative advances in data analysis, yet practical quantum machine learning has remained elusive due to fundamental obstacles such as a steep quantum cost for the loading of classical data and poor trainability of many quantum machine learning algorithms designed for near-term quantum hardware. In this work, we show that one can overcome these obstacles by using a linear Hamiltonian-based machine learning method which provides a compact quantum representation of classical data via ground state problems for k-local Hamiltonians. We use the recent sample-based Krylov quantum diagonalization method to compute low-energy states of the data Hamiltonians, whose parameters are trained to express classical datasets through local gradients. We demonstrate the efficacy and scalability of the methods by performing experiments on benchmark datasets using up to 50 qubits of an IBM Heron quantum processor.
Quantum computing has long promised transformative advances in data analysis, yet practical quantum machine learning has remained elusive due to fundamental obstacles such as a steep quantum cost for the loading of classical data and poor trainability of many quantum machine learning algorithms designed for near-term quantum hardware. In this work, we show that one can overcome these obstacles by using a linear Hamiltonian-based machine learning method which provides a compact quantum representation of classical data via ground state problems for k-local Hamiltonians. We use the recent sample-based Krylov quantum diagonalization method to compute low-energy states of the data Hamiltonians, whose parameters are trained to express classical datasets through local gradients. We demonstrate the efficacy and scalability of the methods by performing experiments on benchmark datasets using up to 50 qubits of an IBM Heron quantum processor.
Machine learning is widely regarded as a promising application in which quantum computing could offer a computational advantage. However, general quantum machine learning models with provable guarantees on performance, trainability, and efficient inference remain limited. In this work, we introduce quantum Hamiltonian embeddings, a supervised learning framework in which a classical training dataset is encoded into a single effective, parameterized Hamiltonian. Training optimizes the parameters of this data-dependent Hamiltonian, whose approximate ground state defines the classification rule. Once the ground state has been approximated using a quantum algorithm, inference can be performed either classically using a classical representation of the learned state, or with a quantum representation of the state. We establish efficient methods for gradient estimation and prove favorable generalization guarantees. Furthermore, under standard cryptographic assumptions, we show that Hamiltonian embeddings can realize hypothesis functions beyond the reach of efficient classical algorithms. We then demonstrate the framework at scale on IBM Heron processors using a standard benchmark dataset. Together, these results establish Hamiltonian embeddings as a new framework for quantum machine learning, combining theoretical guarantees with a path for experimental investigations at scale on quantum hardware.
Abstract Quantum machine learning (QML) is an emerging field that investigates the capabilities of quantum computers for learning tasks. While QML models can theoretically offer advantages such as exponential speed-ups, challenges in data loading and the ability to scale to relevant problem sizes have prevented demonstrations of such advantages on practical problems. In particular, the encoding of arbitrary classical data into quantum states usually comes at a high computational cost, either in terms of qubits or gate count. However, real-world data typically exhibits some inherent structure (such as image data) which can be leveraged to load them with a much smaller cost on a quantum computer. This work further develops an efficient algorithm for finding low-depth quantum circuits to load classical image data as quantum states. To evaluate its effectiveness, we conduct systematic studies on the MNIST, Fashion-MNIST, CIFAR-10, and Imagenette datasets. The corresponding circuits for loading the full large-scale datasets are available publicly as PennyLane datasets and can be used by the community for their own benchmarks. We further analyze the performance of various quantum classifiers, such as quantum kernel methods, parameterized quantum circuits, and tensor-network classifiers, and we compare them to convolutional neural networks. In particular, we focus on the performance of the quantum classifiers as we introduce nonlinear functions of the input state, e.g. by letting the circuit parameters depend on the input state.
Recent advances in Machine Learning have transformed numerous industrial sectors, yet classical paradigms face fundamental limitations: rapidly growing data volumes, rising computational costs, significant energy consumption, and the physical scaling limits of conventional hardware architectures. Quantum computing has emerged as a promising computational paradigm to address these challenges, giving rise to the field of Quantum Machine Learning (QML). In this thesis, the theoretical foundations of QML are investigated, with a focus on near-term and future practical applications. Three central challenges are addressed: the trainability of variational quantum circuits, their expressivity, and their resistance to efficient classical simulation. The trainability of Hamming-weight preserving variational quantum circuits is first studied, and theoretical guarantees are established that resolve an open conjecture on the absence of barren plateaus for this circuit family. Subspace-preserving QML algorithms are then introduced, including photonic circuits and quantum convolutional neural networks, and are designed to mimic classical ML subroutines while offering polynomial quantum advantage. Finally, variational quantum circuits are analyzed as quantum Fourier models, and a framework is derived to jointly characterize expressivity and trainability, from which conditions are obtained under which quantum models provably separate from their classical counterparts. These contributions are intended to advance the theoretical roadmap for harnessing near-term and future quantum technologies in real-world applications.
We propose an approach to generative quantum machine learning that overcomes the fundamental scaling issues of variational quantum circuits. The core idea is to use a class of generative models based on instantaneous quantum polynomial circuits, which we show can be trained efficiently on classical hardware. Although training is classically efficient, sampling from these circuits is widely believed to be classically hard, and so computational advantages are possible when sampling from the trained model on quantum hardware. By combining our approach with a data-dependent parameter initialisation strategy, we do not encounter issues of barren plateaus and successfully circumvent the poor scaling of gradient estimation that plagues traditional approaches to quantum circuit optimisation. We investigate and evaluate our approach on a number of real and synthetic datasets, training models with up to one thousand qubits and hundreds of thousands of parameters. We find that the quantum models can successfully learn from high dimensional data, and perform surprisingly well compared to simple energy-based classical generative models trained with a similar amount of hyperparameter optimisation. Overall, our work demonstrates that a path to scalable quantum generative machine learning exists and can be investigated today at large scales.
Recent theoretical progress has established conditions under which machine learning models can efficiently predict ground-state properties of gapped local Hamiltonians when trained on quantum-generated data. Previous experimental demonstrations in this paradigm, however, have largely been limited to small systems or highly structured states, due to the difficulty of preparing many-body ground states on quantum processors. In this work, we demonstrate learning from experimental quantum data generated from approximate ground states of the two-dimensional Heisenberg XXZ model with system sizes up to 115 qubits. We construct a dataset of single-site expectation values, two-point correlations, and 12-body loop correlations across the antiferromagnetic phase. We then train neural networks on this data and show that they can accurately predict spatially resolved observables for previously unseen Hamiltonian parameters, both within the training distribution and in an out-of-distribution regime approaching the phase boundary. Our results demonstrate the practical realization of learning from quantum data for an interacting two-dimensional many-body system at scale, motivating a path toward regimes where quantum processors could provide training data beyond the reach of classical approximation methods.
Abstract Hybrid quantum-classical algorithms provide ways to use noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers for practical applications. Expanding the portfolio of such techniques, we propose a quantum circuit learning algorithm that can be used to assist the characterization of quantum devices and to train shallow circuits for generative tasks. The procedure leverages quantum hardware capabilities to its fullest extent by using native gates and their qubit connectivity. We demonstrate that our approach can learn an optimal preparation of the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states, also known as “cat states”. We further demonstrate that our approach can efficiently prepare approximate representations of coherent thermal states, wave functions that encode Boltzmann probabilities in their amplitudes. Finally, complementing proposals to characterize the power or usefulness of near-term quantum devices, such as IBM’s quantum volume, we provide a new hardware-independent metric called the qBAS score. It is based on the performance yield in a specific sampling task on one of the canonical machine learning data sets known as Bars and Stripes. We show how entanglement is a key ingredient in encoding the patterns of this data set; an ideal benchmark for testing hardware starting at four qubits and up. We provide experimental results and evaluation of this metric to probe the trade off between several architectural circuit designs and circuit depths on an ion-trap quantum computer.