Quantum Compiling with Reinforcement Learning on a Superconducting Processor

To effectively implement quantum algorithms on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) processors is a central task in modern quantum technology. NISQ processors feature tens to a few hundreds of noisy qubits with limited coherence times and gate operations with errors, so NISQ algorithms naturally require employing circuits of short lengths via quantum compilation. Here, we develop a reinforcement learning (RL)-based quantum compiler for a superconducting processor and demonstrate its capability of discovering novel and hardware-amenable circuits with short lengths. We show that for the three-qubit quantum Fourier transformation, a compiled circuit using only seven CZ gates with unity circuit fidelity can be achieved. The compiler is also able to find optimal circuits under device topological constraints, with lengths considerably shorter than those by the conventional method. Our study exemplifies the codesign of the software with hardware for efficient quantum compilation, offering valuable insights for the advancement of RL-based compilers.

Provable Advantage of Parameterized Quantum Circuit in Function Approximation

Understanding the power of parameterized quantum circuits (PQCs) in accomplishing machine learning tasks is one of the most important questions in quantum machine learning. In this paper, we analyze the expressivity of PQCs through the lens of function approximation. Previously established universal approximation theorems for PQCs are mainly nonconstructive, leading us to the following question: How large do the PQCs need to be to approximate the target function up to a given error? We exhibit explicit constructions of data re-uploading PQCs for approximating continuous and smooth functions and establish quantitative approximation error bounds in terms of the width, the depth and the number of trainable parameters of the PQCs. To achieve this, we utilize techniques from quantum signal processing and linear combinations of unitaries to construct PQCs that implement multivariate polynomials. We implement global and local approximation techniques using Bernstein polynomials and local Taylor expansion and analyze their performances in the quantum setting. We also compare our proposed PQCs to nearly optimal deep neural networks in approximating high-dimensional smooth functions, showing that the ratio between model sizes of PQC and deep neural networks is exponentially small with respect to the input dimension. This suggests a potentially novel avenue for showcasing quantum advantages in quantum machine learning.

Efficient and practical quantum compiler towards multi-qubit systems with deep reinforcement learning

Efficient quantum compiling tactics greatly enhance the capability of quantum computers to execute complicated quantum algorithms. Due to its fundamental importance, a plethora of quantum compilers has been designed in past years. However, there are several caveats to current protocols, which are low optimality, high inference time, limited scalability, and lack of universality. To compensate for these defects, here we devise an efficient and practical quantum compiler assisted by advanced deep reinforcement learning (RL) techniques, i.e., data generation, deep Q-learning, and AQ* search. In this way, our protocol is compatible with various quantum machines and can be used to compile multi-qubit operators. We systematically evaluate the performance of our proposal in compiling quantum operators with both inverse-closed and inverse-free universal basis sets. In the task of single-qubit operator compiling, our proposal outperforms other RL-based quantum compilers in the measure of compiling sequence length and inference time. Meanwhile, the output solution is near-optimal, guaranteed by the Solovay-Kitaev theorem. Notably, for the inverse-free universal basis set, the achieved sequence length complexity is comparable with the inverse-based setting and dramatically advances previous methods. These empirical results contribute to improving the inverse-free Solovay-Kitaev theorem. In addition, for the first time, we demonstrate how to leverage RL-based quantum compilers to accomplish two-qubit operator compiling. The achieved results open an avenue for integrating RL with quantum compiling to unify efficiency and practicality and thus facilitate the exploration of quantum advantages.