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Andre Luckow

Publications and source records attributed to Andre Luckow.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Quantum State Preparation via Neural Network Encoding in Quantum Machine Learning

A central challenge in quantum machine learning is the state preparation bottleneck that describes the prohibitive computational cost of loading high-dimensional classical data into a quantum state. Although amplitude encoding can represent $2^n$-dimensional data using only $n$ qubits in principle, preparing arbitrary states remains computationally expensive, typically requiring variational optimization of a parameterized quantum circuit for each individual data instance. In this work, we propose a method that avoids iterative optimization by training a classical neural network to map input data directly to the continuous parameters of a fixed quantum circuit. We demonstrate the generation of quantum image states with high fidelity on data not seen during training. Since all optimization is performed once during training, the resulting model encodes new inputs in a single inference step, providing a scalable pathway for data loading in near-term quantum algorithms. We validate our method on the MNIST and Fashion-MNIST datasets, achieving fidelities up to 0.992 on unseen images and reducing the per-data-instance runtime by more than 5000-fold.

quant-ph

Assessment of RAG and Fine-Tuning for Industrial Question-Answering-Applications

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly employed in enterprise question-answering (QA) systems, requiring adaptation to domain-specific knowledge. Among the most prevalent methods for incorporating such knowledge are Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and fine-tuning (FT). Yet, from a cost-accuracy trade-off perspective, it remains unclear which approach best suits industry scenarios. This study examines the impact of RAG and FT on two closed datasets specific to the automotive industry, assessing answer quality and operational costs. We extend the Cost-of-Pass framework proposed by Erol et al. (arXiv:2504.13359) to jointly assess output quality, generation cost, and user interaction cost. Our findings reveal that while premium models perform best out of the box, open-source models can achieve comparable quality when enhanced with RAG. Overall, RAG emerges as the most effective and cost-efficient adaptation method for both closed- and open-source models.

cs.CL

Hybrid Quantum-HPC Middleware Systems for Adaptive Resource, Workload and Task Management

Hybrid quantum-classical applications pose significant resource management challenges due to heterogeneity and dynamism in both infrastructure and workloads. Quantum-HPC environments integrate quantum processing units (QPUs) with diverse classical resources (CPUs, GPUs), while applications span coupling patterns from tightly coupled execution to loosely coupled task parallelism with varying resource requirements. Traditional HPC schedulers lack visibility into application semantics and cannot respond to fluctuating resource availability at runtime. This paper presents a middleware-based approach for adaptive resource, workload, and task management in hybrid quantum-HPC systems. We make four contributions: (i) a conceptual four-layer middleware architecture that decomposes management across workflow, workload, task, and resource levels, enabling application-aware scheduling over heterogeneous quantum-HPC resources; (ii) a set of execution motifs capturing interaction and coupling characteristics of hybrid applications, realized as quantum mini-apps for systematic workload characterization; (iii) Pilot-Quantum, a middleware framework built on the pilot abstraction that enables late binding and dynamic resource allocation, adapting to resource and workload dynamics at runtime; and (iv) Q-Dreamer, a performance modeling toolkit providing reusable components for informed workload partitioning, including a circuit-cutting optimizer that analytically derives optimal partitioning strategies. Evaluation on heterogeneous HPC platforms (Perlmutter, NVIDIA DGX with H100/B200 GPUs) demonstrates efficient multi-backend orchestration across CPUs, GPUs, and QPUs for diverse execution motifs. Q-Dreamer predicts optimal circuit cutting configurations with up to 82% accuracy.

quant-ph

Enhancing Generative AI Image Refinement with Scribbles and Annotations: A Comparative Study of Multimodal Prompts

Generative AI (GenAI) image tools are increasingly used in design practice, enabling rapid ideation but offering limited support for refinement tasks such as adjusting layout, scale, or visual attributes. While text prompts and inpainting allow localized edits, they often remain inefficient or ambiguous for precise, in-context, and iterative refinement -- motivating the exploration of alternative methods. This work examines how pen-based scribbles and annotations can enhance GenAI image refinement. A formative study with seven professional designers informed a prototype supporting three input modalities: text-only, visual-only, and combined prompting. A within-subjects study with 30 designers and design students compared these modalities across closed- and open-ended tasks, evaluating expressiveness, efficiency, workload, user experience, iteration, and multimodal strategies. Visual prompts improved clarity and speed for spatial edits while reducing workload, whereas text remained effective for semantic and global changes. The combined modality received the highest overall ratings, enabling complementary use, balancing spatial precision with semantic detail, and supporting smoother iteration. Task-specific preferences also emerged: adding new objects often required both modalities, while moving or modifying elements was typically handled through visual input. This work contributes (1) an empirical comparison of multimodal prompting for GenAI refinement, (2) a prototype integrating scribbles and annotations, and (3) insights into designers' multimodal strategies to inform future GenAI interfaces that better support refinement in GenAI-supported design workflows.

cs.HC

Automated structural testing of LLM-based agents: methods, framework, and case studies

LLM-based agents are rapidly being adopted across diverse domains. Since they interact with users without supervision, they must be tested extensively. Current testing approaches focus on acceptance-level evaluation from the user's perspective. While intuitive, these tests require manual evaluation, are difficult to automate, do not facilitate root cause analysis, and incur expensive test environments. In this paper, we present methods to enable structural testing of LLM-based agents. Our approach utilizes traces (based on OpenTelemetry) to capture agent trajectories, employs mocking to enforce reproducible LLM behavior, and adds assertions to automate test verification. This enables testing agent components and interactions at a deeper technical level within automated workflows. We demonstrate how structural testing enables the adaptation of software engineering best practices to agents, including the test automation pyramid, regression testing, test-driven development, and multi-language testing. In representative case studies, we demonstrate automated execution and faster root-cause analysis. Collectively, these methods reduce testing costs and improve agent quality through higher coverage, reusability, and earlier defect detection. We provide an open source reference implementation on GitHub.

cs.SE

Typical Machine Learning Datasets as Low-Depth Quantum Circuits

Quantum machine learning (QML) is an emerging field that investigates the capabilities of quantum computers for learning tasks. While QML models can theoretically offer advantages such as exponential speed-ups, challenges in data loading and the ability to scale to relevant problem sizes have prevented demonstrations of such advantages on practical problems. In particular, the encoding of arbitrary classical data into quantum states usually comes at a high computational cost, either in terms of qubits or gate count. However, real-world data typically exhibits some inherent structure (such as image data) which can be leveraged to load them with a much smaller cost on a quantum computer. This work further develops an efficient algorithm for finding low-depth quantum circuits to load classical image data as quantum states. To evaluate its effectiveness, we conduct systematic studies on the MNIST, Fashion-MNIST, CIFAR-10, and Imagenette datasets. The corresponding circuits for loading the full large-scale datasets are available publicly as PennyLane datasets and can be used by the community for their own benchmarks. We further analyze the performance of various quantum classifiers, such as quantum kernel methods, parameterized quantum circuits, and tensor-network classifiers, and we compare them to convolutional neural networks. In particular, we focus on the performance of the quantum classifiers as we introduce nonlinear functions of the input state, e.g., by letting the circuit parameters depend on the input state.

quant-ph

Exploring Visual Prompts: Refining Images with Scribbles and Annotations in Generative AI Image Tools

Generative AI (GenAI) tools are increasingly integrated into design workflows. While text prompts remain the primary input method for GenAI image tools, designers often struggle to craft effective ones. Moreover, research has primarily focused on input methods for ideation, with limited attention to refinement tasks. This study explores designers' preferences for three input methods - text prompts, annotations, and scribbles - through a preliminary digital paper-based study with seven professional designers. Designers preferred annotations for spatial adjustments and referencing in-image elements, while scribbles were favored for specifying attributes such as shape, size, and position, often combined with other methods. Text prompts excelled at providing detailed descriptions or when designers sought greater GenAI creativity. However, designers expressed concerns about AI misinterpreting annotations and scribbles and the effort needed to create effective text prompts. These insights inform GenAI interface design to better support refinement tasks, align with workflows, and enhance communication with AI systems.

cs.HC

Pilot-Quantum: A Quantum-HPC Middleware for Resource, Workload and Task Management

As quantum hardware advances, integrating quantum processing units (QPUs) into HPC environments and managing diverse infrastructure and software stacks becomes increasingly essential. Pilot-Quantum addresses these challenges as a middleware designed to provide unified application-level management of resources and workloads across hybrid quantum-classical environments. It is built on a rigorous analysis of existing quantum middleware systems and application execution patterns. It implements the Pilot Abstraction conceptual model, originally developed for HPC, to manage resources, workloads, and tasks. It is designed for quantum applications that rely on task parallelism, including (i) hybrid algorithms, such as variational approaches, and (ii) circuit cutting systems, used to partition and execute large quantum circuits. Pilot-Quantum facilitates seamless integration of QPUs, classical CPUs, and GPUs, while supporting high-level programming frameworks like Qiskit and Pennylane. This enables users to efficiently design and execute hybrid workflows across diverse computing resources. The capabilities of Pilot-Quantum are demonstrated through mini-apps -- simplified yet representative kernels focusing on critical performance bottlenecks. We demonstrate the capabilities of Pilot-Quantum through multiple mini-apps, including different circuit executions (e.g., using IBM\'s Eagle QPU and simulators), circuit cutting, and quantum machine learning scenarios.

quant-ph

Quantum Computing for Automotive Applications

Quantum computing could impact various industries, with the automotive industry with many computational challenges, from optimizing supply chains and manufacturing to vehicle engineering, being particularly promising. This chapter investigates state-of-the-art quantum algorithms to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and scalability across the automotive value chain. We explore recent advances in quantum optimization, machine learning, and numerical and chemistry simulations, highlighting their potential and limitations. We identify and discuss key challenges in near-term and fault-tolerant algorithms and their practical use in industrial applications. While quantum algorithms show potential in many application domains, current noisy intermediate-scale quantum hardware limits scale and, thus, business benefits. In the long term, fault-tolerant systems promise theoretical speedups; however, they also require further progress in hardware and software (e.g., related to error correction and data loading). We expect that with this progress, significant practical benefits will emerge eventually.

quant-ph

Assessing the Requirements for Industry Relevant Quantum Computation

In this paper, we use open-source tools to perform quantum resource estimation to assess the requirements for industry-relevant quantum computation. Our analysis uses the problem of industrial shift scheduling in manufacturing and the Quantum Industrial Shift Scheduling algorithm. We base our figures of merit on current technology, as well as theoretical high-fidelity scenarios for superconducting qubit platforms. We find that the execution time of gate and measurement operations determines the overall computational runtime more strongly than the system error rates. Moreover, achieving a quantum speedup would not only require low system error rates ($10^{-6}$ or better), but also measurement operations with an execution time below 10ns. This rules out the possibility of near-term quantum advantage for this use case, and suggests that significant technological or algorithmic progress will be needed before such an advantage can be achieved.

quant-ph

Quantum-Inspired Fluid Simulation of 2D Turbulence with GPU Acceleration

Tensor network algorithms can efficiently simulate complex quantum many-body systems by utilizing knowledge of their structure and entanglement. These methodologies have been adapted recently for solving the Navier-Stokes equations, which describe a spectrum of fluid phenomena, from the aerodynamics of vehicles to weather patterns. Within this quantum-inspired paradigm, velocity is encoded as matrix product states (MPS), effectively harnessing the analogy between interscale correlations of fluid dynamics and entanglement in quantum many-body physics. This particular tensor structure is also called quantics tensor train (QTT). By utilizing NVIDIA's cuQuantum library to perform parallel tensor computations on GPUs, our adaptation speeds up simulations by up to 12.1 times. This allows us to study the algorithm in terms of its applicability, scalability, and performance. By simulating two qualitatively different but commonly encountered 2D flow problems at high Reynolds numbers up to $1\times10^7$ using a fourth-order time stepping scheme, we find that the algorithm has a potential advantage over direct numerical simulations in the turbulent regime as the requirements for grid resolution increase drastically. In addition, we derive the scaling $\chi=\mathcal{O}(\text{poly}(1/\epsilon))$ for the maximum bond dimension $\chi$ of MPS representing turbulent flow fields, with an error $\epsilon$, based on the spectral distribution of turbulent kinetic energy. Our findings motivate further exploration of related quantum algorithms and other tensor network methods.

physics.flu-dyn

Quantum Mini-Apps: A Framework for Developing and Benchmarking Quantum-HPC Applications

With the increasing maturity and scale of quantum hardware and its integration into HPC systems, there is a need to develop robust techniques for developing, characterizing, and benchmarking quantum-HPC applications and middleware systems. This requires a better understanding of interaction, coupling, and common execution patterns between quantum and classical workload tasks and components. This paper identifies six quantum-HPC execution motifs - recurring execution patterns characterized by distinct coupling and interaction modes. These motifs provide the basis for a suite of quantum mini-apps - simplified application prototypes that encapsulate essential characteristics of production systems. To support these developments, we introduce a mini-app framework that offers the necessary abstractions for creating and executing mini-apps across heterogeneous quantum-HPC infrastructure, making it a valuable tool for performance characterizations and middleware development.

quant-ph

Performance Characterization of Expert Router for Scalable LLM Inference

Large Language Models (LLMs) have experienced widespread adoption across scientific and industrial domains due to their versatility and utility for diverse tasks. Nevertheless, deploying and serving these models at scale with optimal throughput and latency remains a significant challenge, primarily because of LLMs' high computational and memory demands. Specialized models optimized for specific tasks can be combined through a routing mechanism to address these challenges, creating a modular inference system. This paper introduces Expert Router, a scalable routing architecture that directs prompts to specialized expert models. We characterize multiple Expert Router configurations, including different LLama 3 models with quantized and non-quantized weights under up to 1,000 concurrent users. Our findings reveal that Expert Router introduces minimal latency overhead, with the configuration of expert models being a dominating factor in performance outcomes. High-parameter expert models deliver stable throughput and latency under moderate concurrency levels. In contrast, smaller expert models maintain competitive performance across a wider range of concurrent users compared to tensor-parallelized baseline models. This highlights the potential of Expert Router for efficient and scalable LLM deployment.

cs.CL

Towards Application-Aware Quantum Circuit Compilation

Quantum computing has made tremendous improvements in both software and hardware that have sparked interest in academia and industry to realize quantum computing applications. To this end, several steps are necessary: The underlying problem must be encoded in a quantum circuit, a suitable device must be selected to execute it, and it must be compiled accordingly. This compilation step has a significant influence on the quality of the resulting solution. However, current state-of-the-art compilation tools treat the quantum circuit as a sequence of instructions without considering the actual application it realizes -- wasting a yet untapped potential to increase the solution quality. In this work, a different approach is explored that explicitly incorporates the application considered and aims to optimize its solution quality during compilation. Initial results show the benefits of this approach: For an industry-inspired application of a quantum generative model, the proposed approach outperformed Qiskit's most-optimized compilation scheme and led to better solution quality. Therefore, this work presents a first step towards application-aware compilation.

quant-ph

Benchmarking Quantum Generative Learning: A Study on Scalability and Noise Resilience using QUARK

Quantum computing promises a disruptive impact on machine learning algorithms, taking advantage of the exponentially large Hilbert space available. However, it is not clear how to scale quantum machine learning (QML) to industrial-level applications. This paper investigates the scalability and noise resilience of quantum generative learning applications. We consider the training performance in the presence of statistical noise due to finite-shot noise statistics and quantum noise due to decoherence to analyze the scalability of QML methods. We employ rigorous benchmarking techniques to track progress and identify challenges in scaling QML algorithms, and show how characterization of QML systems can be accelerated, simplified, and made reproducible when the QUARK framework is used. We show that QGANs are not as affected by the curse of dimensionality as QCBMs and to which extent QCBMs are resilient to noise.

quant-ph

QISS: Quantum Industrial Shift Scheduling Algorithm

In this paper, we show the design and implementation of a quantum algorithm for industrial shift scheduling (QISS), which uses Grover's adaptive search to tackle a common and important class of valuable, real-world combinatorial optimization problems. We give an explicit circuit construction of the Grover's oracle, incorporating the multiple constraints present in the problem, and detail the corresponding logical-level resource requirements. Further, we simulate the application of QISS to specific small-scale problem instances to corroborate the performance of the algorithm, and we provide an open-source repository with our code, available on github.com/anneriet/QISS . Our work shows how complex real-world industrial optimization problems can be formulated in the context of Grover's algorithm, and paves the way towards important tasks such as physical-level resource estimation for this category of use cases.

quant-ph

Quantum-centric Supercomputing for Materials Science: A Perspective on Challenges and Future Directions

Computational models are an essential tool for the design, characterization, and discovery of novel materials. Hard computational tasks in materials science stretch the limits of existing high-performance supercomputing centers, consuming much of their simulation, analysis, and data resources. Quantum computing, on the other hand, is an emerging technology with the potential to accelerate many of the computational tasks needed for materials science. In order to do that, the quantum technology must interact with conventional high-performance computing in several ways: approximate results validation, identification of hard problems, and synergies in quantum-centric supercomputing. In this paper, we provide a perspective on how quantum-centric supercomputing can help address critical computational problems in materials science, the challenges to face in order to solve representative use cases, and new suggested directions.

quant-ph

A Conceptual Architecture for a Quantum-HPC Middleware

Quantum computing promises potential for science and industry by solving certain computationally complex problems faster than classical computers. Quantum computing systems evolved from monolithic systems towards modular architectures comprising multiple quantum processing units (QPUs) coupled to classical computing nodes (HPC). With the increasing scale, middleware systems that facilitate the efficient coupling of quantum-classical computing are becoming critical. Through an in-depth analysis of quantum applications, integration patterns and systems, we identified a gap in understanding Quantum-HPC middleware systems. We present a conceptual middleware to facilitate reasoning about quantum-classical integration and serve as the basis for a future middleware system. An essential contribution of this paper lies in leveraging well-established high-performance computing abstractions for managing workloads, tasks, and resources to integrate quantum computing into HPC systems seamlessly.

quant-ph