Guang Ping He

Guang Ping He

Based on the linearity of quantum unitary operations, we propose a method that runs the parameterized quantum circuits before encoding the input data. This enables a dataset owner to train machine learning models on quantum cloud computation platforms, without the risk of leaking the information about the data. It is also capable of encoding a vast amount of data effectively at a later time using classical computations, thus saving runtime on quantum computation devices. The trained quantum machine learning models can be run completely on classical computers, meaning the dataset owner does not need to have any quantum hardware, nor even quantum simulators. Moreover, our method mitigates the encoding bottleneck by reducing the required circuit depth from $O(2^{n})$ to $O(n)$, and relax the tolerance on the precision of the quantum gates for the encoding. These results demonstrate yet another advantage of quantum and quantum-inspired machine learning models over existing classical neural networks, and broaden the approaches to data security.

Guang Ping He

We find experimentally that when artificial neural networks are connected in parallel and trained together, they display the following properties. (i) When the parallel-connected neural network (PNN) is optimized, each sub-network in the connection is not optimized. (ii) The contribution of an inferior sub-network to the whole PNN can be on par with that of the superior sub-network. (iii) The PNN can output the correct result even when all sub-networks give incorrect results. These properties are unlikely for natural biological sense organs. Therefore, they could serve as a simple yet effective criterion for measuring the bionic level of neural networks. With this criterion, we further show that when serving as the activation function, the ReLU function can make an artificial neural network more bionic than the sigmoid and Tanh functions do.

Guang Ping He

Finding gradients is a crucial step in training machine learning models. For quantum neural networks, computing gradients using the parameter-shift rule requires calculating the cost function twice for each adjustable parameter in the network. When the total number of parameters is large, the quantum circuit must be repeatedly adjusted and executed, leading to significant computational overhead. Here we propose an approach to compute all gradients using a single circuit only, significantly reducing both the circuit depth and the number of classical registers required. We experimentally validate our approach on both quantum simulators and IBM's real quantum hardware, demonstrating that our method significantly reduces circuit compilation time compared to the conventional approach, resulting in a substantial speedup in total runtime.

Guang Ping He

The Harrow-Hassidim-Lloyd (HHL) algorithm offers exponential speedup for solving the quantum linear-system problem. But some caveats for the speedup could be hard to met. One of the difficulties is the encoding bottleneck, i.e., the efficient preparation of the initial quantum state. To prepare an arbitrary $N$-dimensional state exactly, existing state-preparation approaches generally require a runtime of $O(N)$, which will ruin the speedup of the HHL algorithm. Here we show that the states can be prepared approximately with a runtime of $O(poly(\log N))$ by employing a slightly modified version of the HHL algorithm itself. Thus, applying this approach to prepare the initial state of the original HHL algorithm can preserve the exponential speedup advantage. It can also serve as a standalone solution for other applications demanding fast state preparation.