Abstract In this work, we explore the application of 1D quantum convolutional layers for time series forecasting, framing the problem within the context of machine learning and quantum circuit expressivity. By encoding multiple time steps as features into a quantum circuit, the forecasting task becomes intrinsically multidimensional. We leverage the recent theoretical results that describe Variational Quantum Circuits (VQCs) as multidimensional Fourier series, to design a more expressive 1D quantum convolutional neural network in which an enhanced performance is obtained by reuploading the data. We aim to relate the number of accessible coefficients in each architecture design with the obtained metrics. Our analysis incorporates key machine learning concepts such as expressivity and the presence of barren plateaus, evaluating their impact on generalization and training efficiency. Notably, we show that even with a limited number of trainable parameters, quantum circuits can approximate high-degree Fourier functions, underscoring their expressive capacity and computational efficiency. Our results demonstrate that more expressive ansatz, characterized by richer Fourier spectra, consistently yield improved predictive performance as the number of qubits increases. This study bridges theoretical insights from quantum physics with practical advances in machine learning model design for time series forecasting.
Abstract In this work, we explore the application of 1D quantum convolutional layers for time series forecasting, framing the problem within the context of machine learning and quantum circuit expressivity. By encoding multiple time steps as features into a quantum circuit, the forecasting task becomes intrinsically multidimensional. We leverage the recent theoretical results that describe Variational Quantum Circuits (VQCs) as multidimensional Fourier series, to design a more expressive 1D quantum convolutional neural network in which an enhanced performance is obtained by reuploading the data. We aim to relate the number of accessible coefficients in each architecture design with the obtained metrics. Our analysis incorporates key machine learning concepts such as expressivity and the presence of barren plateaus, evaluating their impact on generalization and training efficiency. Notably, we show that even with a limited number of trainable parameters, quantum circuits can approximate high-degree Fourier functions, underscoring their expressive capacity and computational efficiency. Our results demonstrate that more expressive ansatz, characterized by richer Fourier spectra, consistently yield improved predictive performance as the number of qubits increases. This study bridges theoretical insights from quantum physics with practical advances in machine learning model design for time series forecasting.
In this study, we apply 1D quantum convolution to address the task of time series forecasting. By encoding multiple points into the quantum circuit to predict subsequent data, each point becomes a feature, transforming the problem into a multidimensional one. Building on theoretical foundations from prior research, which demonstrated that Variational Quantum Circuits (VQCs) can be expressed as multidimensional Fourier series, we explore the capabilities of different architectures and ansatz. This analysis considers the concepts of circuit expressibility and the presence of barren plateaus. Analyzing the problem within the framework of the Fourier series enabled the design of an architecture that incorporates data reuploading, resulting in enhanced performance. Rather than a strict requirement for the number of free parameters to exceed the degrees of freedom of the Fourier series, our findings suggest that even a limited number of parameters can produce Fourier functions of higher degrees. This highlights the remarkable expressive power of quantum circuits. This observation is also significant in reducing training times. The ansatz with greater expressibility and number of non-zero Fourier coefficients consistently delivers favorable results across different scenarios, with performance metrics improving as the number of qubits increases.
Abstract In this work, we apply 1D quantum convolution in the task of time series forecasting. By encoding multiple points into the quantum circuit to predict subsequent data, each point becomes a feature and the problem becomes a multidimensional one. Taking as basis previous theoretical works which demonstrated that Variational Quantum Circuits (VQCs) can be expressed as multidimensional Fourier series, the capabilities of different architectures and ansatz are explored. This analysis considers the concepts of circuit expressivity and the presence of barren plateaus. Analyzing the problem within the framework of the Fourier series enabled the incorporation of data reuploading in the architecture, resulting in enhanced performance. Rather than a strict requirement for the number of free parameters to exceed the degrees of freedom of the Fourier series, our findings suggest that even a limited number of parameters can produce Fourier functions of higher degrees. This highlights the remarkable expressive power of quantum circuits. This observation is also significant in reducing training times. The ansatz with greater expressivity and number of non-zero Fourier coefficients consistently delivers favorable results across different scenarios, with performance metrics improving as the number of qubits increases.
We propose a single-qubit Quantum Machine Learning (QML) model for time series forecasting, built around the concept of a Quantum Reupload Unit (QRU), a hardwareefficient quantum circuit architecture with shallow depth. The proposed model demonstrates enhanced predictive power compared to variational methods such as quantum circuits (VQC), parameterized quantum circuits (PQC), and quantum residual blocks (QRB). The proposed QRU outperforms classical learning models such as Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) and Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) with the same number of parameters. The novelty of this approach is its ability to model temporal patterns without relying on an extensive memory state, which reduces resource demands while preserving forecast accuracy. The expressivity of the model is evaluated through Fourier spectral decomposition. We analyze the trainability of our model using the absorption witness metric. We benchmarked the proposed model on the Mackey-Glass chaotic time series and the real-world river level dataset from TAIAO. The proposed model consistently exhibits enhanced expressivity over both of the datasets. These results highlight the significance of QRUs as promising candidates for learning models that can be conveniently deployed on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) hardware.
This paper proposes and evaluate Hybrid Quantum Convolutional Neural Networks (HQCNNs) that integrate Structured Variational Quantum Circuits (SVQCs) into classical convolutional networks for image classification. Prior quanvolutional architectures often rely on unstructured variational circuits, leading to barren-plateau training landscapes, unpredictable convergence, and poor scaling of expressivity as qubit count grows. Moreover, simplistic data-encoding schemes can either fail to capture spatial correlations or demand impractically deep circuits, while arbitrary entanglement patterns obscure the relationship between circuit design and learning capacity. To address these challenges, we design four HQCNN architectures with progressively increased quantum encoding precision, entanglement topology, and classical post-processing depth. Each HQCNN replaces the convolutional layer with a quanvolutional layer: local image patches are encoded into small qubit registers via an Enhanced Novel Enhanced Quantum Representation (ENEQR), then processed by the SVQCs, and then measured to produce quantum feature maps. The four versions vary in quantum structure: Version 1 uses a simple linear 5-qubit chain (q=2), Version 2 adds wrap-around entanglement (closed-loop topology), Version 3 augments the classical head with a deeper batch-normalized multilayer perceptron, and Version 4 increases encoding fidelity to q=4 (7 qubits per patch). All models end-to-end using the Adam optimizer and cross-entropy loss on the MNIST dataset for 10 epochs using a PennyLane simulator. Version 4 achieves the best test accuracy (96% on MNIST). Fourier spectrum analysis reveals that richer entanglement and higher-fidelity encoding broaden the circuits’ harmonic spectrum, correlating with enhanced representational capacity and improved classification performance. These results confirm that carefully structured quantum layers and enhanced encoding can enrich feature representations and boost accuracy, albeit with increased simulation overhead and training complexity.
Abstract As time series feature unstructured data and unique processing requirements, they do not easily fit conventional approaches to quantum modeling. This paper therefore presents various quantum model architectures suitable for encoding and analysis of time series data. In particular, it investigates their architectural design aspects, such as methods of encoding and reuploading of temporal data, parameterizing quantum circuits, controlling the circuit qubit resources and entanglement, and dealing with issues of state evolution in the model Hilbert space, as well as navigability of the classical parameter space for an optimizer.Each approach enhances or impedes model expressivity, i.e. its ability to effectively represent time series data in quantum space, as well as its trainability, i.e. its capacity to learn and generalize for predictive accuracy and efficiency in the process of model optimization. The paper evaluates different quantum circuit configurations for their impact on the expressivity and trainability of a quantum time series analysis model, and analyzes how these two design qualities influence model performance in training and testing.
Quantum Neural Networks (QNNs) offer a promising framework for integrating quantum computing principles into machine learning, yet their practical capabilities and limitations remain insufficiently studied. In this work, we systematically investigate the trainability and approximation properties of QNNs by benchmarking diverse circuit architectures and encoding strategies across synthetic and real-world datasets. We analyze several ansätze, including Hamming, binary, exponential, ternary, turnpike and Golomb, by evaluating their ability to learn synthetic data modeled as random finite Fourier series. To assess real-world applicability, we further evaluate QNNs on two time-series classification tasks: a Fischertechnik pneumatic leak detection dataset and the publicly available NASA bearing fault dataset. Our experiments show that while broader frequency spectra can theoretically enhance expressivity, practical trainability is strongly influenced by architectural factors such as qubit count and circuit depth. Notably, we find that QNNs perform best when the frequency spectrum is tailored to the target function's complexity but remains as compact as possible. Moreover, architectures with identical frequency spectra can differ in trainability, with configurations using more qubits and fewer layers generally performing better, except in the single-layer case. These findings provide guidelines for selecting QNN ansätze and offer new insights into the interplay between expressivity and trainability in quantum machine learning.