Concept learning of parameterized quantum models from limited measurements

Classical learning of the expectation values of observables for quantum states is a natural variant of learning quantum states or channels. While learning-theoretic frameworks establish the sample complexity and the number of measurement shots per sample required for learning such statistical quantities, the interplay between these two variables has not been adequately quantified before. In this work, we take the probabilistic nature of quantum measurements into account in classical modelling and discuss these quantities under a single unified learning framework. We provide provable guarantees for learning parameterized quantum models that also quantify the asymmetrical effects and interplay of the two variables on the performance of learning algorithms. These results show that while increasing the sample size enhances the learning performance of classical machines, even with single-shot estimates, the improvements from increasing measurements become asymptotically trivial beyond a constant factor. We further apply our framework and theoretical guarantees to study the impact of measurement noise on the classical surrogation of parameterized quantum circuit models. Our work provides new tools to analyse the operational influence of finite measurement noise in the classical learning of quantum systems.

MiniZero: Comparative Analysis of AlphaZero and MuZero on Go, Othello, and Atari Games

This paper presents MiniZero, a zero-knowledge learning framework that supports four state-of-the-art algorithms, including AlphaZero, MuZero, Gumbel AlphaZero, and Gumbel MuZero. While these algorithms have demonstrated super-human performance in many games, it remains unclear which among them is most suitable or efficient for specific tasks. Through MiniZero, we systematically evaluate the performance of each algorithm in two board games, 9x9 Go and 8x8 Othello, as well as 57 Atari games. Our empirical findings are summarized as follows. For two board games, using more simulations generally results in higher performance. However, the choice of AlphaZero and MuZero may differ based on game properties. For Atari games, both MuZero and Gumbel MuZero are worth considering. Since each game has unique characteristics, different algorithms and simulations yield varying results. In addition, we introduce an approach, called progressive simulation, which progressively increases the simulation budget during training to allocate computation more efficiently. Our empirical results demonstrate that progressive simulation achieves significantly superior performance in two board games. By making our framework and trained models publicly available, this paper contributes a benchmark for future research on zero-knowledge learning algorithms, assisting researchers in algorithm selection and comparison against these zero-knowledge learning baselines.

Post-variational quantum neural networks

Quantum computing has the potential to provide substantial computational advantages over current state-of-the-art classical supercomputers. However, current hardware is not advanced enough to execute fault-tolerant quantum algorithms. An alternative of using hybrid quantum-classical computing with variational algorithms can exhibit barren plateau issues, causing slow convergence of gradient-based optimization techniques. In this paper, we discuss "post-variational strategies", which shift tunable parameters from the quantum computer to the classical computer, opting for ensemble strategies when optimizing quantum models. We discuss various strategies and design principles for constructing individual quantum circuits, where the resulting ensembles can be optimized with convex programming. Further, we discuss architectural designs of post-variational quantum neural networks and analyze the propagation of estimation errors throughout such neural networks. Lastly, we show that our algorithm can be applied to real-world applications such as image classification on handwritten digits, producing a 96% classification accuracy.