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Quantum

Potential and limitations of random Fourier features for dequantizing quantum machine learning

Ryan Sweke, Erik Recio-Armengol, Sofiène Jerbi, Elies Gil-Fuster, Bryce Fuller, Jens Eisert, Johannes Jakob Meyer

Published Feb 20, 2025• 21 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum machine learning is arguably one of the most explored applications of near-term quantum devices. Much focus has been put on notions of variational quantum machine learning where parameterized quantum circuits (PQCs) are used as learning models. These PQC models have a rich structure which suggests that they might be amenable to efficient dequantization via random Fourier features (RFF). In this work, we establish necessary and sufficient conditions under which RFF does indeed provide an efficient dequantization of variational quantum machine learning for regression. We build on these insights to make concrete suggestions for PQC architecture design, and to identify structures which are necessary for a regression problem to admit a potential quantum advantage via PQC based optimization.

DOI
10.22331/q-2025-02-20-1640

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Quantum machine learning is arguably one of the most explored applications of near-term quantum devices. Much focus has been put on notions of variational quantum machine learning where parameterized quantum circuits (PQCs) are used as learning models. These PQC models have a rich structure which suggests that they might be amenable to efficient dequantization via random Fourier features (RFF). In this work, we establish necessary and sufficient conditions under which RFF does indeed provide an efficient dequantization of variational quantum machine learning for regression. We build on these insights to make concrete suggestions for PQC architecture design, and to identify structures which are necessary for a regression problem to admit a potential quantum advantage via PQC based optimization.
Quantum machine learning is arguably one of the most explored applications of near-term quantum devices. Much focus has been put on notions of variational quantum machine learning where parameterized quantum circuits (PQCs) are used as learning models. These PQC models have a rich structure which suggests that they might be amenable to efficient dequantization via random Fourier features (RFF). In this work, we establish necessary and sufficient conditions under which RFF does indeed provide an efficient dequantization of variational quantum machine learning for regression. We build on these insights to make concrete suggestions for PQC architecture design, and to identify structures which are necessary for a regression problem to admit a potential quantum advantage via PQC based optimization.
There is currently a huge effort to understand the potential and limitations of variational quantum machine learning (QML) based on the optimization of parameterized quantum circuits. Recent proposals toward dequantizing variational QML models for regression problems include approaches based on kernel methods with carefully chosen kernel functions, approximated via Random Fourier Features (RFF). In this short note we show that for a wide range of instances, this approach can be simplified. More specifically, we show that the kernels whose evaluation is approximated by RFF in this dequantization algorithm can in fact often be evaluated exactly and efficiently classically. As such, our results enhance the toolkit for kernel-based dequantization of variational QML.
In the quest for quantum advantage, a central question is under what conditions can classical algorithms achieve a performance comparable to quantum algorithms--a concept known as dequantization. Random Fourier features (RFFs) have demonstrated potential for dequantizing certain quantum neural networks (QNNs) applied to regression tasks, but their applicability to other learning problems and architectures remained unexplored. In this work, we derive bounds on the true risk gap between classical RFF models and quantum models for regression and classification tasks with both QNN and quantum kernel architectures. Furthermore, we provide sufficient conditions under which this gap is small and thus the quantum system can be dequantized via the RFF method. We support our findings with numerical experiments that illustrate the practical dequantization of existing quantum kernel-based methods. Our findings not only broaden the applicability of RFF-dequantization but also enhance the understanding of potential quantum advantages in practical machine-learning tasks.
Quantum machine learning (QML) models often require deep, parameterized circuits to capture complex frequency components, limiting their scalability and near-term implementation. We introduce \textit{Quantum Random Features} (QRF) and \textit{Quantum Dynamical Random Features} (QDRF), lightweight quantum reservoir models inspired by classical random Fourier features (RFF) that generate high-dimensional spectral representations without variational optimization. Using ZZZ-rotation encoding combined with random permutations or Hamiltonian dynamics, these models achieve NfN_fNf​-dimensional feature maps at preprocessing cost O(log⁡(Nf))O(\log(N_f))O(log(Nf​)). Spectral analysis shows that QRF and QDRF reproduce the behavior of RFF, while simulations on Fashion-MNIST reach up to 89.3\% accuracy-matching or surpassing classical baselines with scalable qubit requirements. By linking spectral theory with experimentally feasible quantum dynamics, this work provides a compact and hardware-compatible route to scalable quantum learning.
Many applications of quantum computing in the near term rely on variational quantum circuits (VQCs). They have been showcased as a promising model for reaching a quantum advantage in machine learning with current noisy intermediate scale quantum computers (NISQ). It is often believed that the power of VQCs relies on their exponentially large feature space, and extensive works have explored the expressiveness and trainability of VQCs in that regard. In our work, we propose a classical sampling method that may closely approximate a VQC with Hamiltonian encoding, given only the description of its architecture. It uses the seminal proposal of Random Fourier Features (RFF) and the fact that VQCs can be seen as large Fourier series. We provide general theoretical bounds for classically approximating models built from exponentially large quantum feature space by sampling a few frequencies to build an equivalent low dimensional kernel, and we show experimentally that this approximation is efficient for several encoding strategies. Precisely, we show that the number of required samples grows favorably with the size of the quantum spectrum. This tool therefore questions the hope for quantum advantage from VQCs in many cases, but conversely helps to narrow the conditions for their potential success. We expect VQCs with various and complex encoding Hamiltonians, or with large input dimension, to become more robust to classical approximations.
Abstract Quantum Machine Learning algorithms based on Variational Quantum Circuits (VQCs) are important candidates for useful application of quantum computing. It is known that a VQC is a linear model in a feature space determined by its architecture. Such models can be compared to classical ones using various sets of tools, and surrogate models designed to classically approximate their results were proposed. At the same time, quantum advantages for learning tasks have been proven in the case of discrete data distributions and cryptography primitives. In this work, we propose a framework to avoid Random Feature approximation techniques. Using previous results, we establish conditions on the weight vectors of the quantum models that are necessary to avoid these dequantization methods. We show that this theory is compatible with previously proven quantum advantages on discrete inputs, and provides examples of advantages for continuous inputs. This separation is connected to large weight vector norm, and we suggest that this can only happen with a high dimensional feature map. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to design quantum models that cannot be classically approximated with good generalization. In addition, we provide a method to verify that the necessary condition is respected for a quantum model. Finally, we discuss how concentration issues must be considered to design such instances. We expect that our work will be a starting point to design near-term quantum models that avoid dequantization methods by ensuring non-classical convergence properties, and to identify existing quantum models that can be classically approximated.