Hendra I. Nurdin

Zhan Shi, Hendra I. Nurdin

Kerr nonlinear cavities displaying optical thresholding have been proposed for the realization of ultra-low power photonic logic gates. In the ultra-low photon number regime, corresponding to energy levels in the attojoule scale, quantum input-output models become important to study the effect of unavoidable quantum fluctuations on the performance of such logic gates. However, being a quantum anharmonic oscillator, a Kerr-cavity has an infinite dimensional Hilbert space spanned by the Fock states of the oscillator. This poses a challenge to simulate and analyze photonic logic gates and circuits composed of multiple Kerr nonlinearities. For simulation, the Hilbert of the oscillator is typically truncated to the span of only a finite number of Fock states. This paper develops a quasi-principal components approach to identify important subspaces of a Kerr-cavity Hilbert space and exploits it to construct an approximate reduced model of the Kerr-cavity on a smaller Hilbert space. Using this approach, we find a reduced dimension model with a Hilbert space dimension of 15 that can closely match the magnitudes of the mean transmitted and reflected output fields of a conventional truncated Fock state model of dimension 75, when driven by an input coherent field that switches between two levels. For the same input, the reduced model also closely matches the magnitudes of the mean output fields of Kerr-cavity-based AND and NOT gates and a NAND latch obtained from simulation of the full 75 dimension model.

Zhan Shi, Hendra I. Nurdin

This paper presents formulae for Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) entanglement generated from $N$ nondegenerate optical parametric amplifiers (NOPAs) interconnected in a linear coherent feedback (CFB) chain in the idealized lossless scenario and infinite bandwidth limit. The lossless scenario sets the ultimate EPR entanglement (two-mode squeezing) that can be achieved by this linear chain of NOPAs while the infinite bandwidth limit simplifies the analysis but gives an accurate approximation to the EPR entanglement at low frequencies of interest. Two adjustable phase shifts are placed at the outputs of the system to achieve the best EPR entanglement by selecting appropriate quadratures of the output fields.

Peter J. Ehlers, Hendra I. Nurdin, Daniel Soh

Reservoir computing is a form of machine learning that utilizes nonlinear dynamical systems to perform complex tasks in a cost-effective manner when compared to typical neural networks. Many recent advancements in reservoir computing, in particular quantum reservoir computing, make use of reservoirs that are inherently stochastic. However, the theoretical justification for using these systems has not yet been well established. In this paper, we investigate the universality of stochastic reservoir computers, in which we use a stochastic system for reservoir computing using the probabilities of each reservoir state as the readout instead of the states themselves. In stochastic reservoir computing, the number of distinct states of the entire reservoir computer can potentially scale exponentially with the size of the reservoir hardware, offering the advantage of compact device size. We prove that classes of stochastic echo state networks, and therefore the class of all stochastic reservoir computers, are universal approximating classes. We also investigate the performance of two practical examples of stochastic reservoir computers in classification and chaotic time series prediction. While shot noise is a limiting factor in the performance of stochastic reservoir computing, we show significantly improved performance compared to a deterministic reservoir computer with similar hardware in cases where the effects of noise are small.

Peter J. Ehlers, Hendra I. Nurdin, Daniel Soh

Reservoir computing, using nonlinear dynamical systems, offers a cost-effective alternative to neural networks for complex tasks involving processing of sequential data, time series modeling, and system identification. Echo state networks (ESNs), a type of reservoir computer, mirror neural networks but simplify training. They apply fixed, random linear transformations to the internal state, followed by nonlinear changes. This process, guided by input signals and linear regression, adapts the system to match target characteristics, reducing computational demands. A potential drawback of ESNs is that the fixed reservoir may not offer the complexity needed for specific problems. While directly altering (training) the internal ESN would reintroduce the computational burden, an indirect modification can be achieved by redirecting some output as input. This feedback can influence the internal reservoir state, yielding ESNs with enhanced complexity suitable for broader challenges. In this paper, we demonstrate that by feeding some component of the reservoir state back into the network through the input, we can drastically improve upon the performance of a given ESN. We rigorously prove that, for any given ESN, feedback will almost always improve the accuracy of the output. For a set of three tasks, each representing different problem classes, we find that with feedback the average error measures are reduced by $30\%-60\%$. Remarkably, feedback provides at least an equivalent performance boost to doubling the initial number of computational nodes, a computationally expensive and technologically challenging alternative. These results demonstrate the broad applicability and substantial usefulness of this feedback scheme.

Jiayin Chen, Hendra I. Nurdin, Naoki Yamamoto

The combination of machine learning and quantum computing has emerged as a promising approach for addressing previously untenable problems. Reservoir computing is an efficient learning paradigm that utilizes nonlinear dynamical systems for temporal information processing, i.e., processing of input sequences to produce output sequences. Here we propose quantum reservoir computing that harnesses complex dissipative quantum dynamics. Our class of quantum reservoirs is universal, in that any nonlinear fading memory map can be approximated arbitrarily closely and uniformly over all inputs by a quantum reservoir from this class. We describe a subclass of the universal class that is readily implementable using quantum gates native to current noisy gate-model quantum computers. Proof-of-principle experiments on remotely accessed cloud-based superconducting quantum computers demonstrate that small and noisy quantum reservoirs can tackle high-order nonlinear temporal tasks. Our theoretical and experimental results pave the path for attractive temporal processing applications of near-term gate-model quantum computers of increasing fidelity but without quantum error correction, signifying the potential of these devices for wider applications including neural modeling, speech recognition and natural language processing, going beyond static classification and regression tasks.

Jiayin Chen, Hendra I. Nurdin

In this paper, we develop a theory of learning nonlinear input-output maps with fading memory by dissipative quantum systems, as a quantum counterpart of the theory of approximating such maps using classical dynamical systems. The theory identifies the properties required for a class of dissipative quantum systems to be {\em universal}, in that any input-output map with fading memory can be approximated arbitrarily closely by an element of this class. We then introduce an example class of dissipative quantum systems that is provably universal. Numerical experiments illustrate that with a small number of qubits, this class can achieve comparable performance to classical learning schemes with a large number of tunable parameters. Further numerical analysis suggests that the exponentially increasing Hilbert space presents a potential resource for dissipative quantum systems to surpass classical learning schemes for input-output maps.

Hendra I. Nurdin, Matthew R. James, Naoki Yamamoto

We derive the explicit analytical form of the time-dependent coupling parameter to an external field for perfect absorption of traveling single photon fields with arbitrary temporal profiles by a tunable single input-output open quantum system, which can be realized as either a single qubit or single resonator system. However, the time-dependent coupling parameter for perfect absorption has a singularity at $t=0$ and constraints on real systems prohibit a faithful physical realization of the perfect absorber. A numerical example is included to illustrate the absorber's performance under practical limitations on the coupling strength.