Grier M. Jones

Grier M. Jones, Aviraj Newatia, Alexander Lao et al.

Within quantum machine learning, parametrized quantum circuits provide flexible quantum models, but their performance is often highly task-dependent, making manual circuit design challenging. Alternatively, quantum architecture search algorithms have been proposed to automate the discovery of task-specific parametrized quantum circuits using systematic frameworks. In this work, we propose an evolution-inspired heuristic quantum architecture search algorithm, which we refer to as the local quantum architecture search. The goal of the local quantum architecture search algorithm is to optimize parametrized quantum circuit architectures through a local, probabilistic search over a fixed set of gate-level actions applied to existing circuits. We evaluate the local quantum architecture search algorithm on two synthetic function-fitting regression tasks and two quantum chemistry regression datasets, including the BSE49 dataset of bond separation energies for first- and second-row elements and a dataset of water conformers generated using the data-driven coupled-cluster approach. Using state-vector simulation, our results highlight the applicability of local quantum architecture search algorithm for identifying competitive circuit architectures with desirable performance metrics. Lastly, we analyze the properties of the discovered circuits and demonstrate the deployment of the best-performing model on state-of-the-art quantum hardware.

Grier M. Jones, Viki Kumar Prasad, Ulrich Fekl et al.

In the field of quantum machine learning (QML), parametrized quantum circuits (PQCs) -- constructed using a combination of fixed and tunable quantum gates -- provide a promising hybrid framework for tackling complex machine learning problems. Despite numerous proposed applications, there remains limited exploration of datasets relevant to quantum chemistry. In this study, we investigate the potential benefits and limitations of PQCs on two chemically meaningful datasets: (1) the BSE49 dataset, containing bond separation energies for 49 different classes of chemical bonds, and (2) a dataset of water conformations, where coupled-cluster singles and doubles (CCSD) wavefunctions are predicted from lower-level electronic structure methods using the data-driven coupled-cluster (DDCC) approach. We construct a comprehensive set of 168 PQCs by combining 14 data encoding strategies with 12 variational ans{ä}tze, and evaluate their performance on circuits with 5 and 16 qubits. Our initial analysis examines the impact of circuit structure on model performance using state-vector simulations. We then explore how circuit depth and training set size influence model performance. Finally, we assess the performance of the best-performing PQCs on current quantum hardware, using both noisy simulations ("fake" backends) and real quantum devices. Our findings underscore the challenges of applying PQCs to chemically relevant problems that are straightforward for classical machine learning methods but remain non-trivial for quantum approaches.