Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2610.14533

Sample-Size Scalability and Representation Sensitivity of Quantum Machine Learning Models for Higgs Boson Event Classification

Shiksha Bhardwaj, Ankhi Roy

quant-phSubmitted Oct 10, 2026• Announced Oct 13, 2026• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Quantum machine learning offers new approaches to multivariate event classification in high-energy physics, but its performance relative to optimized classical methods remains uncertain under limited training data and restricted quantum resources. We investigate the sample-size scalability and representation sensitivity of a quantum support vector machine and a variational quantum classifier for Higgs-boson signal--background discrimination using simulated events from the ATLAS Higgs Machine Learning Challenge. The models are trained on balanced subsets ranging from 250 to 4000 events and evaluated on held-out samples preserving the original class distribution. Principal component analysis (PCA) and autoencoder (AE) representations are examined to reduce the input dimensionality and quantum-resource requirements. Four optimized classical classifiers are used as benchmarks under a common preprocessing, validation, and evaluation protocol. We assess training-sample scalability in classical and quantum classifiers using a four-component PCA representation and examine representation sensitivity through a secondary matched-event comparison of four- and eight-component PCA representations. Within the evaluated Higgs-boson classification setting, the QSVM showed stronger performance than the VQC at larger training sample sizes, while remaining below the best-performing classical classifiers.

Related papers

Impact of Circuit Depth versus Qubit Count on Variational Quantum Classifiers for Higgs Boson Signal Detection

Fatih Maulana

High-Energy Physics (HEP) experiments, such as those at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), generate massive datasets that challenge classical computational limits. Quantum Machine Learning (QML) offers a potential advantage in processing high-dimensional data; however, finding the optimal architecture for current Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices remains an open challenge. This study investigates the performance of Variational Quantum Classifiers (VQC) in detecting Higgs Boson signals using the ATLAS Higgs Boson Machine Learning Challenge 2014 experiment dataset. We implemented a dimensionality reduction pipeline using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to map 30 physical features into 4-qubit and 8-qubit latent spaces. We benchmarked three configurations: (A) a shallow 4-qubit circuit, (B) a deep 4-qubit circuit with increased entanglement layers, and (C) an expanded 8-qubit circuit. Experimental results demonstrate that increasing circuit depth significantly improves performance, yielding the highest accuracy of 56.2% (Configuration B), compared to a baseline of 51.9%. Conversely, simply scaling to 8 qubits resulted in a performance degradation to 50.6% due to optimization challenges associated with Barren Plateaus in the larger Hilbert space. These findings suggest that for near-term quantum hardware, prioritizing circuit depth and entanglement capability is more critical than increasing qubit count for effective anomaly detection in HEP data.

quant-pharXiv:2601.11937•Jan 20, 2026•0 citations

On the integration of quantum machine learning into hybrid frameworks for high energy particle physics

Ş. Yalçın, Ayben Karasu Uysal

Abstract In this study, the potential of quantum machine learning (QML) techniques based on trainable quantum circuits was explored for vector boson identification at the large hadron collider (LHC). Specifically, the compact muon solenoid (CMS) experiment dataset was employed to reconstruct the Z boson through the muon–antimuon ( $$\mu ^{+}\mu ^{-}$$ μ + μ - ) decay channel using variational quantum circuits (VQC). To examine the effect of data structure on QML performance, various preprocessing strategies were applied, including different train/test splits, feature selection, dimensionality reduction, and class balancing techniques. The dataset was evaluated under two train/test configurations, namely a balanced split (70:30) and an imbalanced split (80:20), in order to examine the effect of class distribution on QML outcomes. Feature selection based on Random Forest (RF) was used to extract the most informative variables, while principal component analysis (PCA) was utilized to reduce input dimensionality and optimize qubit usage. To mitigate class imbalance, resampling techniques such as the Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE), SMOTE combined with edited nearest neighbors (SMOTEENN), and SMOTE with Tomek Links (SMOTETomek) were implemented. A comparative evaluation using stratified cross-validation was conducted to assess model performance and generalization ability across different configurations. The findings indicated that integrating PCA with resampling methods substantially improves the generalization capacity of the VQC model, especially in imbalanced settings. Among all configurations, SMOTE and SMOTEENN delivered the highest classification performance, boosting sensitivity to the minority class and enhancing model stability. These results highlight the significance of data structure, feature reduction, and resampling in classical quantum (CQ) data processing for high energy physics applications.

The European Physical Journal C•Dec 22, 2025•1 citation

Quantum Machine Learning: Enhancing Algorithms through Quantum Neural Networks and Data Analysis

Rakesh Sengupta, Usha Desai, Anand Singh Rajawat +3 more

This paper evaluates the performance of two quantum machine learning algorithms: Quantum Support Vector Machine (QSVM) and Quantum Principal Component Analysis (Q-PCA). The scalability of QSVM is analyzed across increasing dataset sizes and feature dimensions, revealing faster-than-linear growth in kernel evaluation and SVM training times. However, this computational overhead is accompanied by a notable decline in classification accuracy, highlighting challenges in applying QSVM to larger or more complex datasets. In contrast, Q-PCA demonstrates near-linear scalability with dataset size and qubit count, leveraging the independence of quantum circuit execution and structured operations to maintain efficiency. A QNN-based implementation of Q-PCA further validates its ability to align data with principal components, maximize variance, and enable effective dimensionality reduction. These findings emphasize the potential of Q-PCA for efficient quantum-enhanced data analysis while underscoring the need for optimization in QSVM and further exploration of Q-PCA’s capabilities for real-world quantum computing applications.

International Conference on Augmented Reality, Intelligent Systems, and Industrial Automation (ARIIA)•Dec 20, 2024•3 citations

Learning Reduced Representations for Quantum Classifiers

Patrick Odagiu, Vasilis Belis, Lennart Schulze +6 more

Data sets that are specified by a large number of features are currently outside the area of applicability for quantum machine learning algorithms. An immediate solution to this impasse is the application of dimensionality reduction methods before passing the data to the quantum algorithm. We investigate six conventional feature extraction algorithms and five autoencoder-based dimensionality reduction models to a particle physics data set with 67 features. The reduced representations generated by these models are then used to train a quantum support vector machine for solving a binary classification problem: whether a Higgs boson is produced in proton collisions at the LHC. We show that the autoencoder methods learn a better lower-dimensional representation of the data, with the method we design, the Sinkclass autoencoder, performing 40% better than the baseline. The methods developed here open up the applicability of quantum machine learning to a larger array of data sets. Moreover, we provide a recipe for effective dimensionality reduction in this context.

quant-pharXiv:2512.01509•Quantum Machine Intelligence•Dec 2, 2025•3 citations

Comparative Analysis of Quantum Support Vector Machines and Variational Quantum Classifiers for B-cell Epitope Prediction in Vaccine Design

Chi-Chuan Hwang, Cheng-Fang Su, Hong, Yi-Ang

Quantum computing offers new opportunities for addressing complex classification tasks in biomedical applications. This study investigates two quantum machine learning models-the Quantum Support Vector Machine (QSVM) and the Variational Quantum Classifier (VQC)-in the context of B-cell epitope prediction, a key step in modern vaccine design. QSVM builds upon the classical SVM framework by using quantum circuits to encode nonlinear kernel computations, while VQC replaces the entire classification pipeline with trainable quantum circuits optimized variationally. A benchmark dataset from the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB) is used for model evaluation. Each epitope is represented by 10 physicochemical features, and dimensionality reduction via Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied to assess model performance across different feature spaces. We also examine the effect of sample size on prediction outcomes. Experimental results show that QSVM performs well under limited data conditions, while VQC achieves higher accuracy in larger datasets. These findings highlight the potential of quantum-enhanced models for bioinformatics tasks, particularly in supporting efficient and scalable epitope-based vaccine development.

arXiv:2504.10073•Apr 14, 2025•0 citations

Higgs analysis with quantum classifiers

Vasilis Belis, Samuel González-Castillo, Christina Reissel +4 more

We have developed two quantum classifier models for the ttH classification problem, both of which fall into the category of hybrid quantumclassical algorithms for Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum devices (NISQ). Our results, along with other studies, serve as a proof of concept that Quantum Machine Learning (QML) methods can have similar or better performance, in specific cases of low number of training samples, with respect to conventional ML methods even with a limited number of qubits available in current hardware. To utilise algorithms with a low number of qubits — to accommodate for limitations in both simulation hardware and real quantum hardware — we investigated different feature reduction methods. Their impact on the performance of both the classical and quantum models was assessed. We addressed different implementations of two QML models, representative of the two main approaches to supervised quantum machine learning today: a Quantum Support Vector Machine (QSVM), a kernel-based method, and a Variational Quantum Circuit (VQC), a variational approach.

arXiv:2104.07692•EPJ Web of Conferences•Jan 1, 2021•43 citations
Quantum machine learning offers new approaches to multivariate event classification in high-energy physics, but its performance relative to optimized classical methods remains uncertain under limited training data and restricted quantum resources. We investigate the sample-size scalability and representation sensitivity of a quantum support vector machine and a variational quantum classifier for Higgs-boson signal--background discrimination using simulated events from the ATLAS Higgs Machine Learning Challenge. The models are trained on balanced subsets ranging from 250 to 4000 events and evaluated on held-out samples preserving the original class distribution. Principal component analysis (PCA) and autoencoder (AE) representations are examined to reduce the input dimensionality and quantum-resource requirements. Four optimized classical classifiers are used as benchmarks under a common preprocessing, validation, and evaluation protocol. We assess training-sample scalability in classical and quantum classifiers using a four-component PCA representation and examine representation sensitivity through a secondary matched-event comparison of four- and eight-component PCA representations. Within the evaluated Higgs-boson classification setting, the QSVM showed stronger performance than the VQC at larger training sample sizes, while remaining below the best-performing classical classifiers.
High-Energy Physics (HEP) experiments, such as those at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), generate massive datasets that challenge classical computational limits. Quantum Machine Learning (QML) offers a potential advantage in processing high-dimensional data; however, finding the optimal architecture for current Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices remains an open challenge. This study investigates the performance of Variational Quantum Classifiers (VQC) in detecting Higgs Boson signals using the ATLAS Higgs Boson Machine Learning Challenge 2014 experiment dataset. We implemented a dimensionality reduction pipeline using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to map 30 physical features into 4-qubit and 8-qubit latent spaces. We benchmarked three configurations: (A) a shallow 4-qubit circuit, (B) a deep 4-qubit circuit with increased entanglement layers, and (C) an expanded 8-qubit circuit. Experimental results demonstrate that increasing circuit depth significantly improves performance, yielding the highest accuracy of 56.2% (Configuration B), compared to a baseline of 51.9%. Conversely, simply scaling to 8 qubits resulted in a performance degradation to 50.6% due to optimization challenges associated with Barren Plateaus in the larger Hilbert space. These findings suggest that for near-term quantum hardware, prioritizing circuit depth and entanglement capability is more critical than increasing qubit count for effective anomaly detection in HEP data.
Abstract In this study, the potential of quantum machine learning (QML) techniques based on trainable quantum circuits was explored for vector boson identification at the large hadron collider (LHC). Specifically, the compact muon solenoid (CMS) experiment dataset was employed to reconstruct the Z boson through the muon–antimuon ( μ+μ−\mu ^{+}\mu ^{-}μ+μ− μ + μ - ) decay channel using variational quantum circuits (VQC). To examine the effect of data structure on QML performance, various preprocessing strategies were applied, including different train/test splits, feature selection, dimensionality reduction, and class balancing techniques. The dataset was evaluated under two train/test configurations, namely a balanced split (70:30) and an imbalanced split (80:20), in order to examine the effect of class distribution on QML outcomes. Feature selection based on Random Forest (RF) was used to extract the most informative variables, while principal component analysis (PCA) was utilized to reduce input dimensionality and optimize qubit usage. To mitigate class imbalance, resampling techniques such as the Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE), SMOTE combined with edited nearest neighbors (SMOTEENN), and SMOTE with Tomek Links (SMOTETomek) were implemented. A comparative evaluation using stratified cross-validation was conducted to assess model performance and generalization ability across different configurations. The findings indicated that integrating PCA with resampling methods substantially improves the generalization capacity of the VQC model, especially in imbalanced settings. Among all configurations, SMOTE and SMOTEENN delivered the highest classification performance, boosting sensitivity to the minority class and enhancing model stability. These results highlight the significance of data structure, feature reduction, and resampling in classical quantum (CQ) data processing for high energy physics applications.
This paper evaluates the performance of two quantum machine learning algorithms: Quantum Support Vector Machine (QSVM) and Quantum Principal Component Analysis (Q-PCA). The scalability of QSVM is analyzed across increasing dataset sizes and feature dimensions, revealing faster-than-linear growth in kernel evaluation and SVM training times. However, this computational overhead is accompanied by a notable decline in classification accuracy, highlighting challenges in applying QSVM to larger or more complex datasets. In contrast, Q-PCA demonstrates near-linear scalability with dataset size and qubit count, leveraging the independence of quantum circuit execution and structured operations to maintain efficiency. A QNN-based implementation of Q-PCA further validates its ability to align data with principal components, maximize variance, and enable effective dimensionality reduction. These findings emphasize the potential of Q-PCA for efficient quantum-enhanced data analysis while underscoring the need for optimization in QSVM and further exploration of Q-PCA’s capabilities for real-world quantum computing applications.
Data sets that are specified by a large number of features are currently outside the area of applicability for quantum machine learning algorithms. An immediate solution to this impasse is the application of dimensionality reduction methods before passing the data to the quantum algorithm. We investigate six conventional feature extraction algorithms and five autoencoder-based dimensionality reduction models to a particle physics data set with 67 features. The reduced representations generated by these models are then used to train a quantum support vector machine for solving a binary classification problem: whether a Higgs boson is produced in proton collisions at the LHC. We show that the autoencoder methods learn a better lower-dimensional representation of the data, with the method we design, the Sinkclass autoencoder, performing 40% better than the baseline. The methods developed here open up the applicability of quantum machine learning to a larger array of data sets. Moreover, we provide a recipe for effective dimensionality reduction in this context.
Quantum computing offers new opportunities for addressing complex classification tasks in biomedical applications. This study investigates two quantum machine learning models-the Quantum Support Vector Machine (QSVM) and the Variational Quantum Classifier (VQC)-in the context of B-cell epitope prediction, a key step in modern vaccine design. QSVM builds upon the classical SVM framework by using quantum circuits to encode nonlinear kernel computations, while VQC replaces the entire classification pipeline with trainable quantum circuits optimized variationally. A benchmark dataset from the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB) is used for model evaluation. Each epitope is represented by 10 physicochemical features, and dimensionality reduction via Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied to assess model performance across different feature spaces. We also examine the effect of sample size on prediction outcomes. Experimental results show that QSVM performs well under limited data conditions, while VQC achieves higher accuracy in larger datasets. These findings highlight the potential of quantum-enhanced models for bioinformatics tasks, particularly in supporting efficient and scalable epitope-based vaccine development.
We have developed two quantum classifier models for the ttH classification problem, both of which fall into the category of hybrid quantumclassical algorithms for Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum devices (NISQ). Our results, along with other studies, serve as a proof of concept that Quantum Machine Learning (QML) methods can have similar or better performance, in specific cases of low number of training samples, with respect to conventional ML methods even with a limited number of qubits available in current hardware. To utilise algorithms with a low number of qubits — to accommodate for limitations in both simulation hardware and real quantum hardware — we investigated different feature reduction methods. Their impact on the performance of both the classical and quantum models was assessed. We addressed different implementations of two QML models, representative of the two main approaches to supervised quantum machine learning today: a Quantum Support Vector Machine (QSVM), a kernel-based method, and a Variational Quantum Circuit (VQC), a variational approach.