arXiv subjects

Anh Pham

Publications and source records attributed to Anh Pham.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Enhancing FRET through DNA-controlled Emitters and ENZ Metamaterials

The ability to significantly enhance energy transfer processes at the nanoscale requires the simultaneous optimization of molecular-scale orientation and macroscopic photonic enhancement between multiple quantum emitters. However, achieving this dual control has remained a significant experimental challenge, often limited by the stochastic arrangement of emitter assemblies and spatially non-uniform electromagnetic fields in conventional photonic platforms. In this work, we demonstrate a unified architecture that achieves this synergy by combining the structural precision of DNA nanotechnology with the unique field environment generated by epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) materials. Using DNA molecular beacons as programmable emitter scaffolds, we establish fixed donor-acceptor separations and emitter orientations (Atto425/Cy3.5) in two well-defined conformational states: closed hairpin (emitter separation 2 nm) and extended (8.16 nm) configurations. These structures are then embedded in the near-field of a multilayer ENZ metamaterial substrate, which facilitates spatially uniform, enhanced electromagnetic field coupling. Time-resolved photoluminescence measurements demonstrate a significant increase in FRET efficiency for DNA-programmed emitter pairs in the ENZ environment, compared to those on a glass substrate, corresponding to increased donor quenching and shortened donor lifetime. These results establish a scalable experimental pathway for engineering light-matter interactions at molecular scales with applications in next-generation biosensing and quantum photonic technologies.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Preventing Catastrophic Forgetting: Behavior-Aware Sampling for Safer Language Model Fine-Tuning

Large language models often lose previously aligned safety behaviors when fine-tuned on benign data, a phenomenon known as catastrophic forgetting. Prior work shows that adding random safety examples can mitigate this effect, but it remains unclear which examples are most effective. We propose a behavior-aware sampling framework that selects safety examples based on two complementary factors: instruction-response behavior (e.g., refusal versus compliance) and semantic diversity across harm categories. Systematic evaluation shows that this approach substantially reduces harmful outputs while maintaining helpfulness, achieving up to a 41% reduction in harmfulness with only 0.5% additional training data. These results highlight how targeted data selection can improve the safety and efficiency of fine-tuning at scale.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2025

Harnessing Quantum Dynamics for Robust and Scalable Quantum Extreme Learning Machines

Quantum Extreme Learning Machine (QELM) is an emerging hybrid quantum machine learning framework that leverages quantum system dynamics to enhance classical models. However, QELM can suffer from the exponential concentration problem, where excessive entanglement reduces model expressivity. In this work, we gain insight into this challenge and demonstrate how tensor network methods specifically, the Time Dependent Variational Principle (TDVP) with Matrix Product States (MPS) can efficiently simulate quantum systems while controlling entanglement and mitigating exponential concentration. Using numerical experiments on the Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology (MNIST) dataset, we show that time-evolving an MPS system modeled as a chain of Rydberg atoms produces high-quality data embeddings with low classical computational overhead. Our findings indicate that exact simulation of quantum dynamics is not necessary for strong machine learning performance; even approximate quantum embeddings can yield competitive results. Furthermore, we observe that both increased disorder in the quantum state achieved by tuning Hamiltonian parameters and careful control of entanglement directly correlate with improved model accuracy, highlighting the importance of these factors in optimizing QELM performance.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Towards structure-preserving quantum encodings

Harnessing the potential computational advantage of quantum computers for machine learning tasks relies on the uploading of classical data onto quantum computers through what are commonly referred to as quantum encodings. The choice of such encodings may vary substantially from one task to another, and there exist only a few cases where structure has provided insight into their design and implementation, such as symmetry in geometric quantum learning. Here, we propose the perspective that category theory offers a natural mathematical framework for analyzing encodings that respect structure inherent in datasets and learning tasks. We illustrate this with pedagogical examples, which include geometric quantum machine learning, quantum metric learning, topological data analysis, and more. Moreover, our perspective provides a language in which to ask meaningful and mathematically precise questions for the design of quantum encodings and circuits for quantum machine learning tasks.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Robust Quantum Reservoir Computing for Molecular Property Prediction

Machine learning has been increasingly utilized in the field of biomedical research to accelerate the drug discovery process. In recent years, the emergence of quantum computing has been followed by extensive exploration of quantum machine learning algorithms. Quantum variational machine learning algorithms are currently the most prevalent but face issues with trainability due to vanishing gradients. An emerging alternative is the quantum reservoir computing (QRC) approach, in which the quantum algorithm does not require gradient evaluation on quantum hardware. Motivated by the potential advantages of the QRC method, we apply it to predict the biological activity of potential drug molecules based on molecular descriptors. We observe more robust QRC performance as the size of the dataset decreases, compared to standard classical models, a quality of potential interest for pharmaceutical datasets of limited size. In addition, we leverage the uniform manifold approximation and projection technique to analyze structural changes as classical features are transformed through quantum dynamics and find that quantum reservoir embeddings appear to be more interpretable in lower dimensions.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Quantum Circuits, Feature Maps, and Expanded Pseudo-Entropy: Analysis of Encoding Real-World Data into a Quantum Computer

This manuscript introduces a computationally efficient method to calculate the nonlinearity of a quantum feature map, as well as a method for determining whether a quantum feature map will have a high concentration of quantum states. The technique analyzes quantum operators, through an extension of the functions of von Neumann entropy and state-transition pseudo-entropy, by deriving a method to extract the entropy of an operator. The technique is denoted as operator pseudo-entropy, is rigorously derived, and is generally complex valued; as with state-transition pseudo-entropy, complex values contain a lot of information about entanglement or nonlinearity. The characteristics of a class of quantum feature maps are rigorously shown. The operator pseudo-entropy is illuminated through experiments and compared with von Neumann entropy and state-transition pseudo-entropy. We end the manuscript with open questions and potential directions for further research.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Empirical Power of Quantum Encoding Methods for Binary Classification

Quantum machine learning is one of the many potential applications of quantum computing, each of which is hoped to provide some novel computational advantage. However, quantum machine learning applications often fail to outperform classical approaches on real-world classical data. The ability of these models to generalize well from few training data points is typically considered one of the few definitive advantages of this approach. In this work, we will instead focus on encoding schemes and their effects on various machine learning metrics. Specifically, we focus on real-world data encoding to demonstrate differences between quantum encoding strategies for several real-world datasets and the classification model standard, LightGBM. In particular, we apply the following encoding strategies, including three standard approaches and two modified approaches: Angle, Amplitude, IQP, Entangled Angle, and Alternative IQP. As these approaches require either a significant number of qubits or gates to encode larger datasets, we perform feature selection to support the limited computing power of quantum simulators. This feature selection is performed through a quantum annealing enhanced approach that builds on a QUBO formulation of the problem. In this work, we provide a preliminary demonstration that quantum machine learning with the IQP encoding and LightGBM produce statistically equivalent results for a large majority of the assigned learning tasks.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Semi-supervised 3D Semantic Scene Completion with 2D Vision Foundation Model Guidance

Accurate prediction of 3D semantic occupancy from 2D visual images is vital in enabling autonomous agents to comprehend their surroundings for planning and navigation. State-of-the-art methods typically employ fully supervised approaches, necessitating a huge labeled dataset acquired through expensive LiDAR sensors and meticulous voxel-wise labeling by human annotators. The resource-intensive nature of this annotating process significantly hampers the application and scalability of these methods. We introduce a novel semi-supervised framework to alleviate the dependency on densely annotated data. Our approach leverages 2D foundation models to generate essential 3D scene geometric and semantic cues, facilitating a more efficient training process. Our framework exhibits notable properties: (1) Generalizability, applicable to various 3D semantic scene completion approaches, including 2D-3D lifting and 3D-2D transformer methods. (2) Effectiveness, as demonstrated through experiments on SemanticKITTI and NYUv2, wherein our method achieves up to 85% of the fully-supervised performance using only 10% labeled data. This approach not only reduces the cost and labor associated with data annotation but also demonstrates the potential for broader adoption in camera-based systems for 3D semantic occupancy prediction.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2024

Investigate the Performance of Distribution Loading with Conditional Quantum Generative Adversarial Network Algorithm on Quantum Hardware with Error Suppression

The study examines the efficacy of the Fire Opal error suppression and AI circuit optimization system integrated with IBM's quantum computing platform for a multi-modal distribution loading algorithm. Using Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence as a quantitative error analysis, the results indicate that Fire Opal can improve on the time-dependent distributions generated by our Conditional Quantum Generative Adversarial algorithm by 30-40\% in comparison with the results on the simulator. In addition, Fire Opal's performance remains consistent for complex circuits despite the needs to run more trials. The research concludes that Fire Opal's error suppression and circuit optimization significantly enhanced quantum computing processes, highlighting its potential for practical applications. In addition, the study also reviews leading error mitigation strategies, including zero noise extrapolation (ZNE), probabilistic error cancellation (PEC), Pauli twirling, measurement error mitigation, and machine learning methods, assessing their advantages and disadvantages in terms of technical implementation, quantum resources, and scalability.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Hybrid Quantum Graph Neural Network for Molecular Property Prediction

To accelerate the process of materials design, materials science has increasingly used data driven techniques to extract information from collected data. Specially, machine learning (ML) algorithms, which span the ML discipline, have demonstrated ability to predict various properties of materials with the level of accuracy similar to explicit calculation of quantum mechanical theories, but with significantly reduced run time and computational resources. Within ML, graph neural networks have emerged as an important algorithm within the field of machine learning, since they are capable of predicting accurately a wide range of important physical, chemical and electronic properties due to their higher learning ability based on the graph representation of material and molecular descriptors through the aggregation of information embedded within the graph. In parallel with the development of state of the art classical machine learning applications, the fusion of quantum computing and machine learning have created a new paradigm where classical machine learning model can be augmented with quantum layers which are able to encode high dimensional data more efficiently. Leveraging the structure of existing algorithms, we developed a unique and novel gradient free hybrid quantum classical convoluted graph neural network (HyQCGNN) to predict formation energies of perovskite materials. The performance of our hybrid statistical model is competitive with the results obtained purely from a classical convoluted graph neural network, and other classical machine learning algorithms, such as XGBoost. Consequently, our study suggests a new pathway to explore how quantum feature encoding and parametric quantum circuits can yield drastic improvements of complex ML algorithm like graph neural network.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Towards quantum computing for clinical trial design and optimization: A perspective on new opportunities and challenges

Clinical trials are pivotal in the drug discovery process to determine the safety and efficacy of a drug candidate. The high failure rates of these trials are attributed to deficiencies in clinical model development and protocol design. Improvements in the clinical drug design process could therefore yield significant benefits for all stakeholders involved. This paper examines the current challenges faced in clinical trial design and optimization, reviews established classical computational approaches, and introduces quantum algorithms aimed at enhancing these processes. Specifically, the focus is on three critical aspects: clinical trial simulations, site selection, and cohort identification. This study aims to provide a comprehensive framework that leverages quantum computing to innovate and refine the efficiency and effectiveness of clinical trials.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Scoring Anomalous Vertices Through Quantum Walks

With the constant flow of data from vast sources over the past decades, a plethora of advanced analytical techniques have been developed to extract relevant information from different data types ranging from labeled data, quasi-labeled data, and data with no labels known a priori. For data with at best quasi-labels, graphs are a natural representation of these data types and have important applications in many industries and scientific disciplines. Specifically, for unlabeled data, anomaly detection on graphs is a method to determine which data points do not posses the latent characteristics that is present in most other data. There have been a variety of classical methods to compute an anomalous score for the individual vertices of a respected graph, such as checking the local topology of a node,random walks, and complex neural networks. Leveraging the structure of the graph, we propose a first quantum algorithm to calculate the anomaly score of each node by continuously traversing the graph with a uniform starting position of all nodes. The proposed algorithm incorporates well-known characteristics of quantum random walks, and, taking into consideration the NISQ era and subsequent ISQ era, an adjustment to the algorithm is given to mitigate the increasing depth of the circuit. This algorithm is rigorously shown to converge to the expected probability, with respect to the initial condition.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Emergent magnetism with continuous control in the ultrahigh conductivity layered oxide PdCoO2

The current challenge to realizing continuously tunable magnetism lies in our inability to systematically change properties such as valence, spin, and orbital degrees of freedom as well as crystallographic geometry. Here, we demonstrate that ferromagnetism can be externally turned on with the application of low-energy helium implantation and subsequently erased and returned to the pristine state via annealing. This high level of continuous control is made possible by targeting magnetic metastability in the ultra-high conductivity, non-magnetic layered oxide PdCoO2 where local lattice distortions generated by helium implantation induce emergence of a net moment on the surrounding transition metal octahedral sites. These highly-localized moments communicate through the itinerant metal states which triggers the onset of percolated long-range ferromagnetism. The ability to continuously tune competing interactions enables tailoring precise magnetic and magnetotransport responses in an ultra-high conductivity film and will be critical to applications across spintronics.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2023

Conditional Generative Models for Learning Stochastic Processes

A framework to learn a multi-modal distribution is proposed, denoted as the Conditional Quantum Generative Adversarial Network (C-qGAN). The neural network structure is strictly within a quantum circuit and, as a consequence, is shown to represent a more efficient state preparation procedure than current methods. This methodology has the potential to speed-up algorithms, such as Monte Carlo analysis. In particular, after demonstrating the effectiveness of the network in the learning task, the technique is applied to price Asian option derivatives, providing the foundation for further research on other path-dependent options.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Complement Grover's Search Algorithm: An Amplitude Suppression Implementation

Grover's search algorithm was a groundbreaking advancement in quantum algorithms, displaying a quadratic speed-up of querying for items. Since the creation of this algorithm it has been utilized in various ways, including in preparing specific states for the general circuit. However, as the number of desired items increases so does the gate complexity of the sub-process that conducts the query. To counter this complexity, an extension of Grover's search algorithm is derived where the focus of the query is on the undesirable items in order to suppress the amplitude of the queried items. To display the efficacy the algorithm is implemented as a sub-process into QAOA and applied to a traveling salesman problem. For a basis of comparison, the results are compared against QAOA.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Understanding the Mapping of Encode Data Through An Implementation of Quantum Topological Analysis

A potential advantage of quantum machine learning stems from the ability of encoding classical data into high dimensional complex Hilbert space using quantum circuits. Recent studies exhibit that not all encoding methods are the same when representing classical data since certain parameterized circuit structures are more expressive than the others. In this study, we show the difference in encoding techniques can be visualized by investigating the topology of the data embedded in complex Hilbert space. The technique for visualization is a hybrid quantum based topological analysis which uses simple diagonalization of the boundary operators to compute the persistent Betti numbers and the persistent homology graph. To augment the computation of Betti numbers within a NISQ framework, we suggest a simple hybrid algorithm. Through a illuminating example of a synthetic data set and the methods of angle encoding, amplitude encoding, and IQP encoding, we reveal topological differences with the encoding methods, as well as the original data. Consequently, our results suggest the encoding method needs to be considered carefully within different quantum machine learning models since it can strongly affect downstream analysis like clustering or classification.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Formal Analysis of the API Proxy Problem

Implementing a security mechanism on top of APIs requires clear understanding of the semantics of each API, to ensure that security entitlements are enforced consistently and completely across all APIs that could perform the same function for an attacker. Unfortunately, APIs are not designed to be "semantically orthogonal" and they often overlap, for example by offering different performance points for the same functionality. This leaves it to the security mechanism to discover and account for API proxies, i.e., groups of APIs which together approximate the functionality of some other API. Lacking a complete view of the structure of the API-proxy relationship, current security mechanisms address it in an ad-hoc and reactive manner, by updating the implementation when new API proxies are uncovered and abused by attackers. We analyze the problem of discovering API-proxy relationships and show that its complexity makes it NP-complete, which makes computing exact information about API proxies prohibitively expensive for modern API surfaces that consist of tens of thousands of APIs. We then propose a simple heuristic algorithm to approximate the same API-proxy information and argue that this overapproximation can be safely used for security purposes, with only the downside of some utility loss. We conclude with a number of open problems of both theoretical and practical interest and with potential directions towards new solutions for the API-proxy problem.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2022

Quantum Kernel for Image Classification of Real World Manufacturing Defects

The quantum kernel method results clearly outperformed a classical SVM when analyzing low-resolution images with minimal feature selection on the quantum simulator, with inconsistent results when run on an actual quantum processor. We chose to use an existing quantum kernel method for classification. We applied dynamic decoupling error mitigation using the Mitiq package to the Quantum SVM kernel method, which, to our knowledge, has never been done for quantum kernel methods for image classification. We applied the quantum kernel method to classify real world image data from a manufacturing facility using a superconducting quantum computer. The manufacturing images were used to determine if a product was defective or was produced correctly through the manufacturing process. We also tested the Mitiq dynamical decoupling (DD) methodology to understand effectiveness in decreasing noise-related errors. We also found that the way classical data was encoded onto qubits in quantum states affected our results. All three quantum processing unit (QPU) runs of our angle encoded circuit returned different results, with one run having better than classical results, one run having equivalent to classical results, and a run with worse than classical results. The more complex instantaneous quantum polynomial (IQP) encoding approach showed better precision than classical SVM results when run on a QPU but had a worse recall and F1-score. We found that DD error mitigation did not improve the results of IQP encoded circuits runs and did not have an impact on angle encoded circuits runs on the QPU. In summary, we found that the angle encoded circuit performed the best of the quantum kernel encoding methods on real quantum hardware. In future research projects using quantum kernels to classify images, we recommend exploring other error mitigation techniques than Mitiq DD.

quant-ph↗