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Journal of Quantum Information Science

Continuous Variable Quantum MNIST Classifiers —Classical-Quantum Hybrid Quantum Neural Networks

Sophie Choe, Marek A. Perkowski

Published Jan 1, 2022• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper, classical and continuous variable (CV) quantum neural network hybrid multi-classifiers are presented using the MNIST dataset. Currently available classifiers can classify only up to two classes. The proposed architecture allows networks to classify classes up to nm classes, where n represents cutoff dimension and m the number of qumodes on photonic quantum computers. The combination of cutoff dimension and probability measurement method in the CV model allows a quantum circuit to produce output vectors of size nm. They are then interpreted as one-hot encoded labels, padded with nm - 10 zeros. The total of seven different classifiers is built using 2, 3, …, 6, and 8-qumodes on photonic quantum computing simulators, based on the binary classifier architecture proposed in “Continuous variable quantum neural networks” [1]. They are composed of a classical feed-forward neural network, a quantum data encoding circuit, and a CV quantum neural network circuit. On a truncated MNIST dataset of 600 samples, a 4-qumode hybrid classifier achieves 100% training accuracy.

DOI
10.4236/jqis.2022.122005

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•Aug 1, 2018•338 citations
In this paper, classical and continuous variable (CV) quantum neural network hybrid multi-classifiers are presented using the MNIST dataset. Currently available classifiers can classify only up to two classes. The proposed architecture allows networks to classify classes up to nm classes, where n represents cutoff dimension and m the number of qumodes on photonic quantum computers. The combination of cutoff dimension and probability measurement method in the CV model allows a quantum circuit to produce output vectors of size nm. They are then interpreted as one-hot encoded labels, padded with nm - 10 zeros. The total of seven different classifiers is built using 2, 3, …, 6, and 8-qumodes on photonic quantum computing simulators, based on the binary classifier architecture proposed in “Continuous variable quantum neural networks” [1]. They are composed of a classical feed-forward neural network, a quantum data encoding circuit, and a CV quantum neural network circuit. On a truncated MNIST dataset of 600 samples, a 4-qumode hybrid classifier achieves 100% training accuracy.
In this paper, classical and continuous variable (CV) quantum neural network hybrid multiclassifiers are presented using the MNIST dataset. The combination of cutoff dimension and probability measurement method in the CV model allows a quantum circuit to produce output vectors of size equal to n raised to the power of n where n represents cutoff dimension and m, the number of qumodes. They are then translated as one-hot encoded labels, padded with an appropriate number of zeros. The total of eight different classifiers are built using 2,3,...,8 qumodes, based on the binary classifier architecture proposed in Continuous variable quantum neural networks. The displacement gate and the Kerr gate in the CV model allow for the bias addition and nonlinear activation components of classical neural networks to quantum. The classifiers are composed of a classical feedforward neural network, a quantum data encoding circuit, and a CV quantum neural network circuit. On a truncated MNIST dataset of 600 samples, a 4 qumode hybrid classifier achieves 100% training accuracy.
Audio classification is a key application in deep learning, and quantum machine learning (QML) provides new possibilities by capturing complex patterns in signals through parameterized quantum circuits. However, existing qubit-based models struggle to efficiently represent continuous-valued data common in audio processing, limiting their scalability and expressivity. Continuous Variable Quantum Computing (CVQC) offers a natural framework for processing real-valued data such as mel-spectrograms, addressing the limitations of qubit-based systems while introducing nonlinearity through non-gaussian gates to ensure universality. In CVQC, each qumode represents an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, enabling compact yet expressive information representation. This work introduces a two-qumode Hybrid Continuous Variable Quantum Neural Network (HCVQNN) for audio classification that integrates classical neural layers with a CV quantum circuit for advanced feature extraction and encoding. Experiments conducted using PennyLane demonstrate that HCVQNN achieves comparable audio classification accuracy while requiring fewer resources compared to classical deep networks and qubit-based quantum models.
We implement a hybrid quantum-classical model for image classification that compresses MNIST digit images into a low-dimensional feature space and then maps these features onto a 5-qubit quantum state. First, an autoencoder compresses each 28×2828\times2828×28 image (784 pixels) into a 64-dimensional latent vector, preserving salient features of the digit with minimal reconstruction error. We further reduce the latent representation to 5 principal components using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), to match the 5 available qubits. These 5 features are encoded as rotation angles in a quantum circuit with 5 qubits. The quantum feature map applies single-qubit rotations (RyR_yRy​ gates) proportional to the feature values, followed by a Hadamard gate and a cascade of entangling CNOT gates to produce a non-product entangled state. Measuring the 5-qubit state yields a 32-dimensional probability distribution over basis outcomes, which serves as a quantum-enhanced feature vector for classification. A classical neural network with a softmax output is then trained on these 32-dimensional quantum feature vectors to predict the digit class. We evaluate the hybrid model on the MNIST dataset and compare it to a purely classical baseline that uses the 64-dimensional autoencoder latent features for classification. The results show that the hybrid model can successfully classify digits, demonstrating the feasibility of integrating quantum computing in the classification pipeline, although its accuracy (about 75\% on test data) currently falls below the classical baseline (about 98\% on the same compressed data).
Continuous-variable (CV) quantum computing has shown great potential for building neural network models. These neural networks can have different levels of quantum-classical hybridization depending on the complexity of the problem. Previous work on CV neural network protocols required the implementation of non-Gaussian operators in the network. These operators were used to introduce non-linearity, an essential feature of neural networks. However, these protocols are hard to execute experimentally. We built a CV hybrid quantum-classical neural network protocol that can be realized experimentally with current photonic quantum hardware. Our protocol uses Gaussian gates only with the addition of ancillary qumodes. We implemented non-linearity through repeat-until-success measurements on ancillary qumodes. To test our neural network, we studied canonical machine learning and quantum computer problems in a supervised learning setting -- state preparation, curve fitting, and classification problems. We achieved high fidelity in state preparation of single-photon (99.9%), cat (99.8%), and Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (93.9%) states, a well-fitted curve in the presence of noise at a cost of less than 1%, and more than 95% accuracy in classification problems. These results bode well for real-world applications of CV quantum neural networks.
The continuous-variable (CV) quantum computing has shown a great potential for building neural network models. These neural networks can have different levels of quantum- classical hybridization depending on the complexity of the problem. The previous work on CV neural network protocols requires the implementation of non-Gaussian operators in the network. These operators are used to introduce non-linearity which is an essential feature of neural networks. Due to these operators, the protocols become hard to execute experimentally. We built a CV hybrid quantum-classical neural network protocol that can be realized experimentally. Our protocol uses Gaussian gates only with the addition of ancillary qumodes. We achieve non-linearity through measurements on ancillary qumodes. Our gates can be implemented with squeezers and beam splitters; hence our protocol can be realized experimentally. We study two canonical machine learning problems in a supervised learning setting - curve fitting and binary classification to test our neural network. For the curve fitting problem, we used a fully quantum neural network which produced exceptional results as discussed in the paper. The second problem was more complicated in that we found the fraudulent transaction in the credit card data. After training, our model was able to identify genuine data with almost 92% accuracy. After studying both the problem, we can confidently conclude that our protocol gives good results with a great advantage that it can be implemented experimentally with current photonic quantum hardware.
We introduce a general method for building neural networks on quantum computers. The quantum neural network is a variational quantum circuit built in the continuous-variable (CV) architecture, which encodes quantum information in continuous degrees of freedom such as the amplitudes of the electromagnetic field. This circuit contains a layered structure of continuously parameterized gates which is universal for CV quantum computation. Affine transformations and nonlinear activation functions, two key elements in neural networks, are enacted in the quantum network using Gaussian and non-Gaussian gates, respectively. The non-Gaussian gates provide both the nonlinearity and the universality of the model. Due to the structure of the CV model, the CV quantum neural network can encode highly nonlinear transformations while remaining completely unitary. We show how a classical network can be embedded into the quantum formalism and propose quantum versions of various specialized models such as convolutional, recurrent, and residual networks. Finally, we present numerous modeling experiments built with the strawberry fields software library. These experiments, including a classifier for fraud detection, a network which generates tetris images, and a hybrid classical-quantum autoencoder, demonstrate the capability and adaptability of CV quantum neural networks.