Abhishek Sawaika

Abhishek Sawaika, Durga Pritam Suggisetti, Udaya Parampalli et al.

Learning with large-scale datasets and information-critical applications, such as in High Energy Physics (HEP), demands highly complex, large-scale models that are both robust and accurate. To tackle this issue and cater to the learning requirements, we envision using a federated learning framework with a quantum-enhanced model. Specifically, we design a hybrid quantum-classical long-shot-term-memory model (QLSTM) for local training at distributed nodes. It combines the representative power of quantum models in understanding complex relationships within the feature space, and an LSTM-based model to learn necessary correlations across data points. Given the computing limitations and unprecedented cost of current stand-alone noisy-intermediate quantum (NISQ) devices, we propose to use a federated learning setup, where the learning load can be distributed to local servers as per design and data availability. We demonstrate the benefits of such a design on a classification task for the Supersymmetry(SUSY) dataset, having 5M rows. Our experiments indicate that the performance of this design is not only better that some of the existing work using variational quantum circuit (VQC) based quantum machine learning (QML) techniques, but is also comparable ($Δ\sim \pm 1\%$) to that of classical deep-learning benchmarks. An important observation from this study is that the designed framework has $<$300 parameters and only needs 20K data points to give a comparable performance. Which also turns out to be a 100$\times$ improvement than the compared baseline models. This shows an improved learning capability of the proposed framework with minimal data and resource requirements, due to the joint model with an LSTM based architecture and a quantum enhanced VQC.

Abhishek Sawaika, Samuel Yen-Chi Chen, Udaya Parampalli et al.

Reinforcement learning (RL) is one of the most practical ways to learn from real-life use-cases. Motivated from the cognitive methods used by humans makes it a widely acceptable strategy in the field of artificial intelligence. Most of the environments used for RL are often high-dimensional, and traditional RL algorithms becomes computationally expensive and challenging to effectively learn from such systems. Recent advancements in practical demonstration of quantum computing (QC) theories, such as compact encoding, enhanced representation and learning algorithms, random sampling, or the inherent stochastic nature of quantum systems, have opened up new directions to tackle these challenges. Quantum reinforcement learning (QRL) is seeking significant traction over the past few years. However, the current state of quantum hardware is not enough to cater for such high-dimensional environments with complex multi-agent setup. To tackle this issue, we propose a distributed framework for QRL where multiple agents learn independently, distributing the load of joint training from individual machines. Our method works well for environments with disjoint sets of action and observation spaces, but can also be extended to other systems with reasonable approximations. We analyze the proposed method on cooperative-pong environment and our results indicate ~10% improvement from other distribution strategies, and ~5% improvement from classical models of policy representation.

Abhishek Sawaika, Udaya Parampalli, Rajkumar Buyya

Rapid advancements in cloud based platforms providing access to quantum computing capabilities have opened up several challenges for efficient usage of these highly delicate and costly devices. Although most of the current systems use a priority based access protocol, they are unable to fully support reliable, efficient, and scalable execution of larger-scale applications. To overcome this limitation, we propose a comprehensive solution for efficient allocation of quantum programs to appropriate quantum devices, considering all the relevant cost metrics into account including, fidelity, execution time and communication overhead. We also formulate use-cases for distributed quantum workflow and propose modified graph based algorithms to solve for allocation of such use-cases, assuming a hybrid classical-quantum network. Since hardware advancements in large standalone devices is an ongoing process, it is critical to investigate such distributed workflows to maximize the best utilization of current NISQ devices. Our empirical study shows that the proposed techniques perform better than state-of-the-art methods for almost all evaluation parameters, with average improvements of approximately $5\%$ in execution time, $30\%$ in communication overhead, $40\%$ in wait time and $2\%$ in fidelity, providing better solutions to efficient allocation strategies.

Abhishek Sawaika, Swetang Krishna, Tushar Tomar et al.

Rapid growth of digital transactions has led to a surge in fraudulent activities, challenging traditional detection methods in the financial sector. To tackle this problem, we introduce a specialised federated learning framework that uniquely combines a quantum-enhanced Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model with advanced privacy preserving techniques. By integrating quantum layers into the LSTM architecture, our approach adeptly captures complex cross-transactional patters, resulting in an approximate 5% performance improvement across key evaluation metrics compared to conventional models. Central to our framework is "FedRansel", a novel method designed to defend against poisoning and inference attacks, thereby reducing model degradation and inference accuracy by 4-8%, compared to standard differential privacy mechanisms. This pseudo-centralised setup with a Quantum LSTM model, enhances fraud detection accuracy and reinforces the security and confidentiality of sensitive financial data.

Siva Sai, Abhishek Sawaika, Prabhjot Singh et al.

Federated learning (FL) focuses on collaborative model training without the need to move the private data silos to a central server. Despite its several benefits, the classical FL is plagued with several limitations, such as high computational power required for model training(which is critical for low-resource clients), privacy risks, large update traffic, and non-IID heterogeneity. This chapter surveys a hybrid paradigm - Quantum Federated Learning (QFL), which introduces quantum computation, that addresses multiple challenges of classical FL and offers rapid computing capability while keeping the classical orchestration intact. Firstly, we motivate QFL with a concrete presentation on pain points of classical FL, followed by a discussion on a general architecture of QFL frameworks specifying the roles of client and server, communication primitives and the quantum model placement. We classify the existing QFL systems based on four criteria - quantum architecture (pure QFL, hybrid QFL), data processing method (quantum data encoding, quantum feature mapping, and quantum feature selection & dimensionality reduction), network topology (centralized, hierarchial, decentralized), and quantum security mechanisms (quantum key distribution, quantum homomorphic encryption, quantum differential privacy, blind quantum computing). We then describe applications of QFL in healthcare, vehicular networks, wireless networks, and network security, clearly highlighting where QFL improves communication efficiency, security, and performance compared to classical FL. We close with multiple challenges and future works in QFL, including extension of QFL beyond classification tasks, adversarial attacks, realistic hardware deployment, quantum communication protocols deployment, aggregation of different quantum models, and quantum split learning as an alternative to QFL.

Nouhaila Innan, Abhishek Sawaika, Ashim Dhor et al.

Financial fraud detection is essential for preventing significant financial losses and maintaining the reputation of financial institutions. However, conventional methods of detecting financial fraud have limited effectiveness, necessitating the need for new approaches to improve detection rates. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for detecting financial fraud using Quantum Graph Neural Networks (QGNNs). QGNNs are a type of neural network that can process graph-structured data and leverage the power of Quantum Computing (QC) to perform computations more efficiently than classical neural networks. Our approach uses Variational Quantum Circuits (VQC) to enhance the performance of the QGNN. In order to evaluate the efficiency of our proposed method, we compared the performance of QGNNs to Classical Graph Neural Networks using a real-world financial fraud detection dataset. The results of our experiments showed that QGNNs achieved an AUC of $0.85$, which outperformed classical GNNs. Our research highlights the potential of QGNNs and suggests that QGNNs are a promising new approach for improving financial fraud detection.