scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Author

Marcello Benedetti

Other affiliations: Ames Research Center
Bio: Marcello Benedetti is an academic researcher from University College London. The author has contributed to research in topics: Quantum computer & Quantum. The author has an hindex of 17, co-authored 38 publications receiving 1824 citations. Previous affiliations of Marcello Benedetti include Ames Research Center.

Papers
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
13 Nov 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the components of these models and discuss their application to a variety of data-driven tasks, such as supervised learning and generative modeling, as well as their application in machine learning applications.
Abstract: Hybrid quantum-classical systems make it possible to utilize existing quantum computers to their fullest extent. Within this framework, parameterized quantum circuits can be regarded as machine learning models with remarkable expressive power. This Review presents the components of these models and discusses their application to a variety of data-driven tasks, such as supervised learning and generative modeling. With an increasing number of experimental demonstrations carried out on actual quantum hardware and with software being actively developed, this rapidly growing field is poised to have a broad spectrum of real-world applications.

395 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This Review presents components of parameterized quantum circuits and discusses their application to a variety of data-driven tasks such as supervised learning and generative modeling.
Abstract: Hybrid quantum-classical systems make it possible to utilize existing quantum computers to their fullest extent. Within this framework, parameterized quantum circuits can be regarded as machine learning models with remarkable expressive power. This Review presents the components of these models and discusses their application to a variety of data-driven tasks, such as supervised learning and generative modeling. With an increasing number of experimental demonstrations carried out on actual quantum hardware and with software being actively developed, this rapidly growing field is poised to have a broad spectrum of real-world applications.

258 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a hierarchical tensor network is used for binary classification of quantum data encoded in a quantum state, which can be used to classify highly entangled quantum states, for which there is no known efficient classical method.
Abstract: Quantum circuits with hierarchical structure have been used to perform binary classification of classical data encoded in a quantum state. We demonstrate that more expressive circuits in the same family achieve better accuracy and can be used to classify highly entangled quantum states, for which there is no known efficient classical method. We compare performance for several different parameterizations on two classical machine learning datasets, Iris and MNIST, and on a synthetic dataset of quantum states. Finally, we demonstrate that performance is robust to noise and deploy an Iris dataset classifier on the ibmqx4 quantum computer. Quantum algorithms with hierarchical tensor network structures may provide an efficient approach to machine learning using quantum computers. Recent theoretical work has indicated that quantum algorithms could have an advantage over classical methods for the linear algebra computations involved in machine learning. At the same time, mathematical structures called tensor networks, with some similarities to neural networks, have been shown to represent quantum states and circuits that can be efficiently evaluated. Edward Grant from University College London and colleagues from the UK and China have shown how quantum algorithms based on two tensor network structures can be used to classify both classical and quantum data. If implemented on a large scale quantum computer, their approach may enable classification of two-dimensional images and entangled quantum data more efficiently than is possible with classical methods.

248 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
09 Dec 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors theoretically motivate and empirically validate an initialization strategy which can resolve the barren plateau problem for practical applications, which involves randomly selecting some of the initial parameter values, then choosing the remaining values so that the circuit is a sequence of shallow blocks that each evaluates to the identity.
Abstract: Parametrized quantum circuits initialized with random initial parameter values are characterized by barren plateaus where the gradient becomes exponentially small in the number of qubits. In this technical note we theoretically motivate and empirically validate an initialization strategy which can resolve the barren plateau problem for practical applications. The technique involves randomly selecting some of the initial parameter values, then choosing the remaining values so that the circuit is a sequence of shallow blocks that each evaluates to the identity. This initialization limits the effective depth of the circuits used to calculate the first parameter update so that they cannot be stuck in a barren plateau at the start of training. In turn, this makes some of the most compact ansatze usable in practice, which was not possible before even for rather basic problems. We show empirically that variational quantum eigensolvers and quantum neural networks initialized using this strategy can be trained using a gradient based method.

236 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A systematic study assessing the impact of the effective temperatures in the learning of a special class of a restricted Boltzmann machine embedded on quantum hardware, which can serve as a building block for deep-learning architectures.
Abstract: An increase in the efficiency of sampling from Boltzmann distributions would have a significant impact on deep learning and other machine-learning applications. Recently, quantum annealers have been proposed as a potential candidate to speed up this task, but several limitations still bar these state-of-the-art technologies from being used effectively. One of the main limitations is that, while the device may indeed sample from a Boltzmann-like distribution, quantum dynamical arguments suggest it will do so with an instance-dependent effective temperature, different from its physical temperature. Unless this unknown temperature can be unveiled, it might not be possible to effectively use a quantum annealer for Boltzmann sampling. In this work, we propose a strategy to overcome this challenge with a simple effective-temperature estimation algorithm. We provide a systematic study assessing the impact of the effective temperatures in the learning of a special class of a restricted Boltzmann machine embedded on quantum hardware, which can serve as a building block for deep-learning architectures. We also provide a comparison to $k$-step contrastive divergence (CD-$k$) with $k$ up to 100. Although assuming a suitable fixed effective temperature also allows us to outperform one-step contrastive divergence (CD-1), only when using an instance-dependent effective temperature do we find a performance close to that of CD-100 for the case studied here.

223 citations


Cited by
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
13 Sep 2017-Nature
TL;DR: The field of quantum machine learning explores how to devise and implement quantum software that could enable machine learning that is faster than that of classical computers.
Abstract: Recent progress implies that a crossover between machine learning and quantum information processing benefits both fields. Traditional machine learning has dramatically improved the benchmarking an ...

2,162 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article reviews in a selective way the recent research on the interface between machine learning and the physical sciences, including conceptual developments in ML motivated by physical insights, applications of machine learning techniques to several domains in physics, and cross fertilization between the two fields.
Abstract: Machine learning (ML) encompasses a broad range of algorithms and modeling tools used for a vast array of data processing tasks, which has entered most scientific disciplines in recent years. This article reviews in a selective way the recent research on the interface between machine learning and the physical sciences. This includes conceptual developments in ML motivated by physical insights, applications of machine learning techniques to several domains in physics, and cross fertilization between the two fields. After giving a basic notion of machine learning methods and principles, examples are described of how statistical physics is used to understand methods in ML. This review then describes applications of ML methods in particle physics and cosmology, quantum many-body physics, quantum computing, and chemical and material physics. Research and development into novel computing architectures aimed at accelerating ML are also highlighted. Each of the sections describe recent successes as well as domain-specific methodology and challenges.

1,504 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This review presents strategies employed to construct quantum algorithms for quantum chemistry, with the goal that quantum computers will eventually answer presently inaccessible questions, for example, in transition metal catalysis or important biochemical reactions.
Abstract: One of the most promising suggested applications of quantum computing is solving classically intractable chemistry problems. This may help to answer unresolved questions about phenomena such as high temperature superconductivity, solid-state physics, transition metal catalysis, and certain biochemical reactions. In turn, this increased understanding may help us to refine, and perhaps even one day design, new compounds of scientific and industrial importance. However, building a sufficiently large quantum computer will be a difficult scientific challenge. As a result, developments that enable these problems to be tackled with fewer quantum resources should be considered important. Driven by this potential utility, quantum computational chemistry is rapidly emerging as an interdisciplinary field requiring knowledge of both quantum computing and computational chemistry. This review provides a comprehensive introduction to both computational chemistry and quantum computing, bridging the current knowledge gap. Major developments in this area are reviewed, with a particular focus on near-term quantum computation. Illustrations of key methods are provided, explicitly demonstrating how to map chemical problems onto a quantum computer, and how to solve them. The review concludes with an outlook on this nascent field.

954 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This Letter interprets the process of encoding inputs in a quantum state as a nonlinear feature map that maps data to quantum Hilbert space and shows how it opens up a new avenue for the design of quantum machine learning algorithms.
Abstract: A basic idea of quantum computing is surprisingly similar to that of kernel methods in machine learning, namely, to efficiently perform computations in an intractably large Hilbert space. In this Letter we explore some theoretical foundations of this link and show how it opens up a new avenue for the design of quantum machine learning algorithms. We interpret the process of encoding inputs in a quantum state as a nonlinear feature map that maps data to quantum Hilbert space. A quantum computer can now analyze the input data in this feature space. Based on this link, we discuss two approaches for building a quantum model for classification. In the first approach, the quantum device estimates inner products of quantum states to compute a classically intractable kernel. The kernel can be fed into any classical kernel method such as a support vector machine. In the second approach, we use a variational quantum circuit as a linear model that classifies data explicitly in Hilbert space. We illustrate these ideas with a feature map based on squeezing in a continuous-variable system, and visualize the working principle with two-dimensional minibenchmark datasets.

852 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An overview of the field of Variational Quantum Algorithms is presented and strategies to overcome their challenges as well as the exciting prospects for using them as a means to obtain quantum advantage are discussed.
Abstract: Applications such as simulating complicated quantum systems or solving large-scale linear algebra problems are very challenging for classical computers due to the extremely high computational cost. Quantum computers promise a solution, although fault-tolerant quantum computers will likely not be available in the near future. Current quantum devices have serious constraints, including limited numbers of qubits and noise processes that limit circuit depth. Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs), which use a classical optimizer to train a parametrized quantum circuit, have emerged as a leading strategy to address these constraints. VQAs have now been proposed for essentially all applications that researchers have envisioned for quantum computers, and they appear to the best hope for obtaining quantum advantage. Nevertheless, challenges remain including the trainability, accuracy, and efficiency of VQAs. Here we overview the field of VQAs, discuss strategies to overcome their challenges, and highlight the exciting prospects for using them to obtain quantum advantage.

842 citations