Various classical machine learning models, including linear regression, kernel methods, and deep neural networks, exhibit double descent, in which the test risk peaks near the interpolation threshold and then decreases in the overparameterized regime. However, this phenomenon has received less attention in the quantum setting. In this work, we investigate the double descent phenomenon in quantum kernel ridge regression (QKRR). By applying deterministic equivalents from random matrix theory (RMT), we derive an asymptotic expression for the test risk of QKRR in the high-dimensional limit. Our analysis rigorously characterizes the interpolation peak and reveals how explicit regularization can effectively suppress it. We corroborate our theoretical results with numerical simulations, demonstrating close agreement even for finite-size quantum systems.
Various classical machine learning models, including linear regression, kernel methods, and deep neural networks, exhibit double descent, in which the test risk peaks near the interpolation threshold and then decreases in the overparameterized regime. However, this phenomenon has received less attention in the quantum setting. In this work, we investigate the double descent phenomenon in quantum kernel ridge regression (QKRR). By applying deterministic equivalents from random matrix theory (RMT), we derive an asymptotic expression for the test risk of QKRR in the high-dimensional limit. Our analysis rigorously characterizes the interpolation peak and reveals how explicit regularization can effectively suppress it. We corroborate our theoretical results with numerical simulations, demonstrating close agreement even for finite-size quantum systems.
The double descent phenomenon challenges traditional statistical learning theory by revealing scenarios where larger models do not necessarily lead to reduced performance on unseen data. While this counterintuitive behavior has been observed in a variety of classical machine learning models, particularly modern neural network architectures, it remains elusive within the context of quantum machine learning. In this work, we analytically demonstrate that linear regression models in quantum feature spaces can exhibit double descent behavior by drawing on insights from classical linear regression and random matrix theory. Additionally, our numerical experiments on quantum kernel methods across different real-world datasets and system sizes further confirm the existence of a test error peak, a characteristic feature of double descent. Our findings provide evidence that quantum models can operate in the modern, overparameterized regime without experiencing overfitting, potentially opening pathways to improved learning performance beyond traditional statistical learning theory.
Increasing capacity can induce a machine learning model to generalize worse until it perfectly interpolates the training data, and better once it moves beyond interpolation. This inversion, known as \emph{double descent}, is well understood for independent features. For correlated features, its shape is governed by the spectrum of the feature covariance, but existing analyses typically yield only implicit equations. We first close this gap for classical linear regression, analytically characterizing the entire risk curve through two quantities, namely the condition number of the feature population covariance and a spectral measure of correlation strength. Then, we apply this theory on quantum models, focusing on quantum extreme learning machines (QELMs). We show that three tunable design knobs, \textit{i.e.,} encoding strength, input reuploads, and measurement shots, each regularize the QELM output covariance, and derive conditions under which the interpolation threshold remains stable. Finite measurement shot noise can be leveraged to guarantee this stability. Numerical experiments confirm each prediction, yielding concrete design principles for QELMs that generalize well beyond interpolation.
Neural quantum states (NQS) provide flexible and compact wave-function parametrizations for numerical studies of quantum many-body physics. In particular, NQS aim to circumvent the exponential scaling of the Hilbert space by compressing quantum many-body wave functions with a tractable amount of parameters. While inspired by deep learning, it remains unclear to what extent NQS share characteristics with neural networks used for standard machine learning tasks. We demonstrate that, in a simplified supervised setting, NQS exhibit the double descent phenomenon, a key feature of modern deep learning, where generalization worsens as network size increases before improving again in an overparameterized regime. Notably, we find the second descent to occur only for network sizes much larger than the Hilbert space dimension, i.e., network sizes that are out of reach for problems of practical interest. Within our setting, this observation places typical NQS in the underparameterized regime. We also observe that the optimal network size in the underparameterized regime depends on the number of unique training samples. While the double descent phenomenon does indeed translate to the NQS setting, potential practical consequences of our findings point more toward the need for symmetry-aware, physics-informed architecture design, rather than directly adopting machine learning heuristics.
Grokking, the delayed transition from memorization to generalization, is a fundamental phenomenon in gradient-based learning, yet its dynamics within variational quantum machine learning (QML) remain largely unexamined. In this work, we report the empirical observation of both the grokking transition and epoch-wise double descent in a two-qubit quantum neural network (QNN) under a complete parameterization of the SU(4) manifold. We demonstrate that overparameterization via increased circuit depth improves the probability of successful generalization. Notably, these architectures frequently exhibit an epoch-wise double descent in test error, degrading at a critical epoch before recovering into a generalizing state. Crucially, we identify a generalization decay in late-stage training, where the test error increases significantly despite a stagnant training loss. Bridging this behavior with algorithmic stability theory, our analysis reveals that this decay correlates with an unconstrained increase of the weight-norm, drifting away from sparse, phase-aligned harmonic solutions toward overfitted solutions in the Hilbert space. We analyze the underlying temporal dynamics of this transition, demonstrating how the onset of generalization is linked to optimization hyperparameters such as learning rate and weight decay. Finally, to mitigate late-stage decay, we introduce a weak explicit weight-norm regularization into the loss function. We demonstrate that this structural anchor stabilizes the post-grokking phase and permanently preserves generalization gains, providing a robust framework for training overparameterized quantum circuits.
The widespread success of deep neural networks has revealed a surprise in classical machine learning: very complex models often generalize well while simultaneously overfitting training data. This phenomenon of benign overfitting has been studied for a variety of classical models with the goal of better understanding the mechanisms behind deep learning. Characterizing the phenomenon in the context of quantum machine learning might similarly improve our understanding of the relationship between overfitting, overparameterization, and generalization. In this work, we provide a characterization of benign overfitting in quantum models. To do this, we derive the behavior of a classical interpolating Fourier features models for regression on noisy signals, and show how a class of quantum models exhibits analogous features, thereby linking the structure of quantum circuits (such as data-encoding and state preparation operations) to overparameterization and overfitting in quantum models. We intuitively explain these features according to the ability of the quantum model to interpolate noisy data with locally "spiky" behavior and provide a concrete demonstration example of benign overfitting.
A central challenge in quantum machine learning is understanding the scaling behavior of parameterized quantum circuits (PQCs). In particular, it remains unclear how their performance on unseen data changes as the number of trainable parameters increases. Prior works have derived formal generalization guarantees for quantum models, but it is well-known that many such results do not fully characterize generalization behavior in practice. In this work, we show that gradient-based PQCs can exhibit improved performance on unseen data as model size increases, displaying the phenomenon of double descent. This contrasts with the traditional view that larger models lead to degraded generalization. We provide analytical results rigorously underpinning this behavior by leveraging add-one-in perturbation techniques and spectral properties of random matrices. We support these results with numerical experiments on re-uploading PQCs across several data sets and training set sizes, consistently observing the predicted double descent behavior. While other obstacles on the path toward practical quantum machine learning remain, our finding that deeper parameterized quantum circuits do not necessarily exhibit degraded performance provides reasons for cautious optimism.