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SPIE Quantum Information Science, Sensing, and Computation

Quantum generative adversarial networks (QGANs) using quantum kernel learning for discriminators

Lubjana Beshaj, Gaurav Tyagi

Published May 30, 2025• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This paper presents a novel framework for Quantum Generative Adversarial Networks (QGANs) that integrates Quantum Kernel Learning into the discriminator architecture. By replacing the classical discriminator with a Quantum Kernel Discriminator (QKD), the proposed model leverages high-dimensional Hilbert space mappings to enhance separability between real and generated data. The quantum discriminator employs Pauli Feature Maps and Fidelity Quantum Kernels to evaluate sample similarity in the quantum space, leading to improved training stability and reduced mode collapse. Empirical results on the MNIST dataset demonstrate faster convergence, higher fooling scores, and improved sample diversity compared to classical GANs. Additionally, the application of Quantum Kernel Methods to the Iris dataset highlights the generalization capabilities of the QKD approach. These findings establish the potential of hybrid quantum-classical architectures in advancing generative modeling and open new avenues for applying quantum machine learning in low-data and high-complexity domains.

DOI
10.1117/12.3055924

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This paper presents a novel framework for Quantum Generative Adversarial Networks (QGANs) that integrates Quantum Kernel Learning into the discriminator architecture. By replacing the classical discriminator with a Quantum Kernel Discriminator (QKD), the proposed model leverages high-dimensional Hilbert space mappings to enhance separability between real and generated data. The quantum discriminator employs Pauli Feature Maps and Fidelity Quantum Kernels to evaluate sample similarity in the quantum space, leading to improved training stability and reduced mode collapse. Empirical results on the MNIST dataset demonstrate faster convergence, higher fooling scores, and improved sample diversity compared to classical GANs. Additionally, the application of Quantum Kernel Methods to the Iris dataset highlights the generalization capabilities of the QKD approach. These findings establish the potential of hybrid quantum-classical architectures in advancing generative modeling and open new avenues for applying quantum machine learning in low-data and high-complexity domains.
This paper investigates the application of Quantum Generative Adversarial Networks (QGANs) to data augmentation for machine learning. Traditional Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) rely on classical neural networks, while this research explores leveraging quantum circuits as generators within a QGAN architecture. The core idea is to train a quantum generator to produce synthetic data samples, supplementing existing datasets with novel instances. The discriminator remains a classical neural network, tasked with distinguishing between real and generated data. We present a theoretical framework for this approach, outlining the mathematical formulation and key components. Specifically, we introduce the notation (x, s_1, s_2, ..., s_K) to represent data samples, generator states, and relevant parameters. The objective function for the QGAN is defined as minimizing the Jensen-Shannon divergence between the real and generated data distributions. The effectiveness of this approach is discussed, highlighting potential advantages and challenges. This work contributes to the emerging field of quantum machine learning and offers a novel strategy for improving the performance of machine learning models, particularly in scenarios with limited training data.
This paper introduces a novel hybrid quantumclassical model using QGAN (quantum generative adversarial network) to achieve more efficient, convergent and noiserobust machine learning for nearterm quantum (NISQ) applications. Unlike the existing GAN type models that were purely classical or purely quantum, to propose a quantum generator consisting of shallow variation circuits (48 qubits) together with a classical discriminator that is crucial for the stability of adversarial training. The empirical results on the MNIST dataset showed that were able to perform classification with an accuracy of 94.2%, an improvement of over 3.2% from a straightforward classical only approach, while NVGAN also improved its generative performance to a Fréchet Inception Distance (FID) score of 38.7 or 26% in quality enhancement from synthesis perspective. Both trainings converged 50 epochs earlier than each training when used the hybrid model (30% improvement in convergence). The key innovation of this work is bringing (1) to bear both the utility of the quantumenhanced feature representation to have at disposal, and (2) classical stability measures and erroraware optimizations (such as parameter clipping, early stopping), such that its hybridization enabled it to continue operating with>90%\mathbf{> 9 0 \%}>90%accuracy under cases of reasonable depolarizing/amplitude damping noise on an MLP where purely quantum formulations decayed to (approx 70%). Altogether, the paper validates the presented hybrid QGAN approach as a statistically substantiated noise robust and scalable representational tool for real world applications of quantum enhanced machine learning tasks on NISQ platforms.
Quantum machine learning (QML) has received increasing attention due to its potential to outperform classical machine learning methods in problems such as classification and identification tasks. A subclass of QML methods is quantum generative adversarial networks (QGANs) which have been studied as a quantum counterpart of classical GANs widely used in image manipulation and generation tasks. The existing work on QGANs is still limited to small-scale proof-of-concept examples based on images with significant down-scaling. Here we integrate classical and quantum techniques to propose a new hybrid quantum-classical GAN framework. We demonstrate its superior learning capabilities over existing quantum techniques by generating 28×28 pixels grey-scale images without dimensionality reduction or classical pre/post-processing on multiple classes of the standard MNIST and Fashion MNIST datasets, which achieves comparable results to classical frameworks with three orders of magnitude less trainable generator parameters. To gain further insight into the working of our hybrid approach, we systematically explore the impact of its parameter space by varying the number of qubits, the size of image patches, the number of layers in the generator, the shape of the patches and the choice of prior distribution. Our results show that increasing the quantum generator size generally improves the learning capability of the network. The developed framework provides a foundation for future design of QGANs with optimal parameter set tailored for complex image generation tasks
Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have demonstrated immense potential in synthesizing diverse and high-fidelity images; however, critical questions remain regarding how quantum principles might best enhance their representational capacity. This thesis investigates hybrid quantum-classical GAN architectures supplemented by transfer learning in the discriminator, systematically examining whether incorporating Variational Quantum Circuits (VQCs) into the generator, the discriminator, or both improves performance over fully classical baselines. We evaluate each configuration using standard GAN benchmarks (CIFAR-10 classes: Birds, Cars, and Dogs) under varying sample sizes (5,000 vs. 2,500 images per class) to gauge both robustness and data efficiency. Our findings indicate that fully hybrid models, which incorporate VQCs in both the generator and the discriminator, consistently produce images of higher visual quality and achieve more favorable quantitative metrics (such as Fréchet Inception Distance (FID), Kernel Inception Distance (KID), and Inception Score (IS)) compared to their fully classical counterpart. In particular, VQCs in the generator accelerate early feature learning, whereas those in the discriminator, despite exhibiting slower initial convergence, ultimately facilitate more refined synthetic outputs. Moreover, the model sustains near-comparable performance even when the dataset size is halved, suggesting that transfer learning and quantum enhancements mitigate data limitations. By comparing classical and hybrid configurations in detail, this thesis illustrates the trade-offs arising from VQCs in GANs, such as variations in early-epoch convergence and final generative quality. Overall, the results underscore that carefully integrating quantum computing principles with classical adversarial training and pretrained feature extraction can significantly enrich GAN-based image synthesis. These insights open avenues for future work on higher-resolution tasks, alternative quantum circuit designs, and experimentation with emerging quantum hardware.
Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have demonstrated immense potential in synthesizing diverse and high-fidelity images; however, critical questions remain regarding how quantum principles might best enhance their representational capacity. This thesis investigates hybrid quantum-classical GAN architectures supplemented by transfer learning in the discriminator, systematically examining whether incorporating Variational Quantum Circuits (VQCs) into the generator, the discriminator, or both improves performance over fully classical baselines. We evaluate each configuration using standard GAN benchmarks (CIFAR-10 classes: Birds, Cars, and Dogs) under varying sample sizes (5,000 vs. 2,500 images per class) to gauge both robustness and data efficiency. Our findings indicate that fully hybrid models, which incorporate VQCs in both the generator and the discriminator, consistently produce images of higher visual quality and achieve more favorable quantitative metrics (such as Fréchet Inception Distance (FID), Kernel Inception Distance (KID), and Inception Score (IS)) compared to their fully classical counterpart. In particular, VQCs in the generator accelerate early feature learning, whereas those in the discriminator, despite exhibiting slower initial convergence, ultimately facilitate more refined synthetic outputs. Moreover, the model sustains near-comparable performance even when the dataset size is halved, suggesting that transfer learning and quantum enhancements mitigate data limitations.By comparing classical and hybrid configurations in detail, this thesis illustrates the trade-offs arising from VQCs in GANs, such as variations in early-epoch convergence and final generative quality. Overall, the results underscore that carefully integrating quantum computing principles with classical adversarial training and pretrained feature extraction can significantly enrich GAN-based image synthesis. These insights open avenues for future work on higher-resolution tasks, alternative quantum circuit designs, and experimentation with emerging quantum hardware.
One of the most promising applications in the era of Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) computing is quantum generative adversarial networks (QGANs), which offer significant quantum advantages over classical machine learning in various domains. However, QGANs suffer from mode collapse and lack explicit control over the features of generated outputs. To overcome these limitations, we propose InfoQGAN, a novel quantum-classical hybrid generative adversarial network that integrates the principles of InfoGAN with a QGAN architecture. Our approach employs a variational quantum circuit for data generation, a classical discriminator, and a Mutual Information Neural Estimator (MINE) to explicitly optimize the mutual information between latent codes and generated samples. Numerical simulations on synthetic 2D distributions and Iris dataset augmentation demonstrate that InfoQGAN effectively mitigates mode collapse while achieving robust feature disentanglement in the quantum generator. By leveraging these advantages, InfoQGAN not only enhances training stability but also improves data augmentation performance through controlled feature generation. These results highlight the potential of InfoQGAN as a foundational approach for advancing quantum generative modeling in the NISQ era.