Supervised learning of random quantum circuits via scalable neural networks

Abstract

Predicting the output of quantum circuits is a hard computational task that plays a pivotal role in the development of universal quantum computers. Here we investigate the supervised learning of output expectation values of random quantum circuits. Deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are trained to predict single-qubit and two-qubit expectation values using databases of classically simulated circuits. These circuits are built using either a universal gate set or a continuous set of rotations plus an entangling gate, and they are represented via properly designed encodings of these gates. The prediction accuracy for previously unseen circuits is analyzed, also making comparisons with small-scale quantum computers available from the free IBM Quantum program. The CNNs often outperform these quantum devices, depending on the circuit depth, on the network depth, and on the training set size. Notably, our CNNs are designed to be scalable. This allows us exploiting transfer learning and performing extrapolations to circuits larger than those included in the training set. These CNNs also demonstrate remarkable resilience against noise, namely, they remain accurate even when trained on (simulated) expectation values averaged over very few measurements.