arXiv subjects

Tongyang Li

Publications and source records attributed to Tongyang Li.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Quantum Non-Identical Mean Estimation: Efficient Algorithms and Fundamental Limits

We systematically investigate quantum algorithms and lower bounds for mean estimation given query access to non-identically distributed samples. On the one hand, we give quantum mean estimators with quadratic quantum speed-up given samples from different bounded or sub-Gaussian random variables. On the other hand, we prove that, in general, it is impossible for any quantum algorithm to achieve quadratic speed-up over the number of classical samples needed to estimate the mean $μ$, where the samples come from different random variables with mean close to $μ$. Technically, our quantum algorithms reduce bounded and sub-Gaussian random variables to the Bernoulli case, and use an uncomputation trick to overcome the challenge that direct amplitude estimation does not work with non-identical query access. Our quantum query lower bounds are established by simulating non-identical oracles by parallel oracles, and also by an adversarial method with non-identical oracles. Both results pave the way for proving quantum query lower bounds with non-identical oracles in general, which may be of independent interest.

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arXiv2024

A Quantum Algorithm Framework for Discrete Probability Distributions with Applications to Rényi Entropy Estimation

Estimating statistical properties is fundamental in statistics and computer science. In this paper, we propose a unified quantum algorithm framework for estimating properties of discrete probability distributions, with estimating Rényi entropies as specific examples. In particular, given a quantum oracle that prepares an $n$-dimensional quantum state $\sum_{i=1}^{n}\sqrt{p_{i}}|i\rangle$, for $α>1$ and $0<α<1$, our algorithm framework estimates $α$-Rényi entropy $H_α(p)$ to within additive error $ε$ with probability at least $2/3$ using $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(n^{1-\frac{1}{2α}}/ε+ \sqrt{n}/ε^{1+\frac{1}{2α}})$ and $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(n^{\frac{1}{2α}}/ε^{1+\frac{1}{2α}})$ queries, respectively. This improves the best known dependence in $ε$ as well as the joint dependence between $n$ and $1/ε$. Technically, our quantum algorithms combine quantum singular value transformation, quantum annealing, and variable-time amplitude estimation. We believe that our algorithm framework is of general interest and has wide applications.

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arXiv2024

Towards Advantages of Parameterized Quantum Pulses

The advantages of quantum pulses over quantum gates have attracted increasing attention from researchers. Quantum pulses offer benefits such as flexibility, high fidelity, scalability, and real-time tuning. However, while there are established workflows and processes to evaluate the performance of quantum gates, there has been limited research on profiling parameterized pulses and providing guidance for pulse circuit design. To address this gap, our study proposes a set of design spaces for parameterized pulses, evaluating these pulses based on metrics such as expressivity, entanglement capability, and effective parameter dimension. Using these design spaces, we demonstrate the advantages of parameterized pulses over gate circuits in the aspect of duration and performance at the same time thus enabling high-performance quantum computing. Our proposed design space for parameterized pulse circuits has shown promising results in quantum chemistry benchmarks.

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arXiv2024

Near-Optimal Quantum Algorithm for Minimizing the Maximal Loss

The problem of minimizing the maximum of $N$ convex, Lipschitz functions plays significant roles in optimization and machine learning. It has a series of results, with the most recent one requiring $O(Nε^{-2/3} + ε^{-8/3})$ queries to a first-order oracle to compute an $ε$-suboptimal point. On the other hand, quantum algorithms for optimization are rapidly advancing with speedups shown on many important optimization problems. In this paper, we conduct a systematic study for quantum algorithms and lower bounds for minimizing the maximum of $N$ convex, Lipschitz functions. On one hand, we develop quantum algorithms with an improved complexity bound of $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{N}ε^{-5/3} + ε^{-8/3})$. On the other hand, we prove that quantum algorithms must take $\tildeΩ(\sqrt{N}ε^{-2/3})$ queries to a first order quantum oracle, showing that our dependence on $N$ is optimal up to poly-logarithmic factors.

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arXiv2023

Fast and Practical Quantum-Inspired Classical Algorithms for Solving Linear Systems

We propose fast and practical quantum-inspired classical algorithms for solving linear systems. Specifically, given sampling and query access to a matrix $A\in\mathbb{R}^{m\times n}$ and a vector $b\in\mathbb{R}^m$, we propose classical algorithms that produce a data structure for the solution $x\in\mathbb{R}^{n}$ of the linear system $Ax=b$ with the ability to sample and query its entries. The resulting $x$ satisfies $\|x-A^{+}b\|\leqε\|A^{+}b\|$, where $\|\cdot\|$ is the spectral norm and $A^+$ is the Moore-Penrose inverse of $A$. Our algorithm has time complexity $\widetilde{O}(κ_F^4/κε^2)$ in the general case, where $κ_{F} =\|A\|_F\|A^+\|$ and $κ=\|A\|\|A^+\|$ are condition numbers. Compared to the prior state-of-the-art result [Shao and Montanaro, arXiv:2103.10309v2], our algorithm achieves a polynomial speedup in condition numbers. When $A$ is $s$-sparse, our algorithm has complexity $\widetilde{O}(s κ\log(1/ε))$, matching the quantum lower bound for solving linear systems in $κ$ and $1/ε$ up to poly-logarithmic factors [Harrow and Kothari]. When $A$ is $s$-sparse and symmetric positive-definite, our algorithm has complexity $\widetilde{O}(s\sqrtκ\log(1/ε))$. Technically, our main contribution is the application of the heavy ball momentum method to quantum-inspired classical algorithms for solving linear systems, where we propose two new methods with speedups: quantum-inspired Kaczmarz method with momentum and quantum-inspired coordinate descent method with momentum. Their analysis exploits careful decomposition of the momentum transition matrix and the application of novel spectral norm concentration bounds for independent random matrices. Finally, we also conduct numerical experiments for our algorithms on both synthetic and real-world datasets, and the experimental results support our theoretical claims.

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arXiv2023

SpacePulse: Combining Parameterized Pulses and Contextual Subspace for More Practical VQE

In this paper, we explore the integration of parameterized quantum pulses with the contextual subspace method. The advent of parameterized quantum pulses marks a transition from traditional quantum gates to a more flexible and efficient approach to quantum computing. Working with pulses allows us to potentially access areas of the Hilbert space that are inaccessible with a CNOT-based circuit decomposition. Compared to solving the complete Hamiltonian via the traditional Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE), the computation of the contextual correction generally requires fewer qubits and measurements, thus improving computational efficiency. Plus a Pauli grouping strategy, our framework, SpacePulse, can minimize the quantum resource cost for the VQE and enhance the potential for processing larger molecular structures.

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arXiv2023

Efficient simulation of sparse Markovian quantum dynamics

Quantum algorithms for simulating Hamiltonian dynamics have been extensively developed, but there has been much less work on quantum algorithms for simulating the dynamics of open quantum systems. We give the first efficient quantum algorithms for simulating Markovian quantum dynamics generated by Lindbladians that are not necessarily local. We introduce two approaches to simulating sparse Lindbladians. First, we show how to simulate Lindbladians that act within small invariant subspaces using a quantum algorithm to implement sparse Stinespring isometries. Second, we develop a method for simulating sparse Lindblad operators by concatenating a sequence of short-time evolutions. We also show limitations on Lindbladian simulation by proving a no-fast-forwarding theorem for simulating sparse Lindbladians in black-box models.

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arXiv2023

Unleashing the Potential of LLMs for Quantum Computing: A Study in Quantum Architecture Design

Large Language Models (LLMs) contribute significantly to the development of conversational AI and has great potentials to assist the scientific research in various areas. This paper attempts to address the following questions: What opportunities do the current generation of generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs) offer for the developments of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) technologies? Additionally, what potentials does the forthcoming generation of GPTs possess to push the frontier of research in fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC)? In this paper, we implement a QGAS model, which can rapidly propose promising ansatz architectures and evaluate them with application benchmarks including quantum chemistry and quantum finance tasks. Our results demonstrate that after a limited number of prompt guidelines and iterations, we can obtain a high-performance ansatz which is able to produce comparable results that are achieved by state-of-the-art quantum architecture search methods. This study provides a simple overview of GPT's capabilities in supporting quantum computing research while highlighting the limitations of the current GPT at the same time. Additionally, we discuss futuristic applications for LLM in quantum research.

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arXiv2023

Sampling-based sublinear low-rank matrix arithmetic framework for dequantizing quantum machine learning

We present an algorithmic framework for quantum-inspired classical algorithms on close-to-low-rank matrices, generalizing the series of results started by Tang's breakthrough quantum-inspired algorithm for recommendation systems [STOC'19]. Motivated by quantum linear algebra algorithms and the quantum singular value transformation (SVT) framework of Gilyén, Su, Low, and Wiebe [STOC'19], we develop classical algorithms for SVT that run in time independent of input dimension, under suitable quantum-inspired sampling assumptions. Our results give compelling evidence that in the corresponding QRAM data structure input model, quantum SVT does not yield exponential quantum speedups. Since the quantum SVT framework generalizes essentially all known techniques for quantum linear algebra, our results, combined with sampling lemmas from previous work, suffice to generalize all recent results about dequantizing quantum machine learning algorithms. In particular, our classical SVT framework recovers and often improves the dequantization results on recommendation systems, principal component analysis, supervised clustering, support vector machines, low-rank regression, and semidefinite program solving. We also give additional dequantization results on low-rank Hamiltonian simulation and discriminant analysis. Our improvements come from identifying the key feature of the quantum-inspired input model that is at the core of all prior quantum-inspired results: $\ell^2$-norm sampling can approximate matrix products in time independent of their dimension. We reduce all our main results to this fact, making our exposition concise, self-contained, and intuitive.

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arXiv2023

Near-Optimal Quantum Coreset Construction Algorithms for Clustering

$k$-Clustering in $\mathbb{R}^d$ (e.g., $k$-median and $k$-means) is a fundamental machine learning problem. While near-linear time approximation algorithms were known in the classical setting for a dataset with cardinality $n$, it remains open to find sublinear-time quantum algorithms. We give quantum algorithms that find coresets for $k$-clustering in $\mathbb{R}^d$ with $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{nk}d^{3/2})$ query complexity. Our coreset reduces the input size from $n$ to $\mathrm{poly}(kε^{-1}d)$, so that existing $α$-approximation algorithms for clustering can run on top of it and yield $(1 + ε)α$-approximation. This eventually yields a quadratic speedup for various $k$-clustering approximation algorithms. We complement our algorithm with a nearly matching lower bound, that any quantum algorithm must make $Ω(\sqrt{nk})$ queries in order to achieve even $O(1)$-approximation for $k$-clustering.

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arXiv2023

Quantum Lower Bounds for Finding Stationary Points of Nonconvex Functions

Quantum algorithms for optimization problems are of general interest. Despite recent progress in classical lower bounds for nonconvex optimization under different settings and quantum lower bounds for convex optimization, quantum lower bounds for nonconvex optimization are still widely open. In this paper, we conduct a systematic study of quantum query lower bounds on finding $ε$-approximate stationary points of nonconvex functions, and we consider the following two important settings: 1) having access to $p$-th order derivatives; or 2) having access to stochastic gradients. The classical query lower bounds is $Ω\big(ε^{-\frac{1+p}{p}}\big)$ regarding the first setting, and $Ω(ε^{-4})$ regarding the second setting (or $Ω(ε^{-3})$ if the stochastic gradient function is mean-squared smooth). In this paper, we extend all these classical lower bounds to the quantum setting. They match the classical algorithmic results respectively, demonstrating that there is no quantum speedup for finding $ε$-stationary points of nonconvex functions with $p$-th order derivative inputs or stochastic gradient inputs, whether with or without the mean-squared smoothness assumption. Technically, our quantum lower bounds are obtained by showing that the sequential nature of classical hard instances in all these settings also applies to quantum queries, preventing any quantum speedup other than revealing information of the stationary points sequentially.

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arXiv2023

On Quantum Speedups for Nonconvex Optimization via Quantum Tunneling Walks

Classical algorithms are often not effective for solving nonconvex optimization problems where local minima are separated by high barriers. In this paper, we explore possible quantum speedups for nonconvex optimization by leveraging the global effect of quantum tunneling. Specifically, we introduce a quantum algorithm termed the quantum tunneling walk (QTW) and apply it to nonconvex problems where local minima are approximately global minima. We show that QTW achieves quantum speedup over classical stochastic gradient descents (SGD) when the barriers between different local minima are high but thin and the minima are flat. Based on this observation, we construct a specific double-well landscape, where classical algorithms cannot efficiently hit one target well knowing the other well but QTW can when given proper initial states near the known well. Finally, we corroborate our findings with numerical experiments.

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arXiv2023

Fidelity estimator, randomized benchmarking and ZNE for quantum pulses

Most previous research focused on designing pulse programs without considering the performance of individual elements or the final fidelity. To evaluate the performance of quantum pulses, it is required to know the noiseless results of the pulses. However, quantum pulses can implement unitary matrices that are not analytically known to the user, and pulse simulator usually comes with significant computational overhead. Consequently, determining fidelity of a pulse program is challenging without the knowledge of the ideal results. In this paper, we propose to use reversed pulses to evaluate the performance of quantum pulses, which can provide guidance to design pulse programs. By employing reversed pulses, we can ensure that, in the noiseless situation, the final quantum states are the same as the initial states. This method enables us to evaluate the fidelity of pulse programs by measuring the difference between the final states and the initial states. Such fidelity estimator can tell whether the results are meaningful for quantum pulses on real quantum machines. There are various quantum error correction (QEC) methods available for gate circuits; however, few studies have demonstrated QEC on pulse-level programs. In this paper, we use reversed pulses to implement zero noise extrapolation (ZNE) on pulse programs and demonstrate results for variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) tasks. The deviation from the idea energy value is reduced by an average of 54.1\% with our techniques.

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arXiv2023

Quantum State Preparation with Optimal Circuit Depth: Implementations and Applications

Quantum state preparation is an important subroutine for quantum computing. We show that any $n$-qubit quantum state can be prepared with a $Θ(n)$-depth circuit using only single- and two-qubit gates, although with a cost of an exponential amount of ancillary qubits. On the other hand, for sparse quantum states with $d\geqslant2$ non-zero entries, we can reduce the circuit depth to $Θ(\log(nd))$ with $O(nd\log d)$ ancillary qubits. The algorithm for sparse states is exponentially faster than best-known results and the number of ancillary qubits is nearly optimal and only increases polynomially with the system size. We discuss applications of the results in different quantum computing tasks, such as Hamiltonian simulation, solving linear systems of equations, and realizing quantum random access memories, and find cases with exponential reductions of the circuit depth for all these three tasks. In particular, using our algorithm, we find a family of linear system solving problems enjoying exponential speedups, even compared to the best-known quantum and classical dequantization algorithms.

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arXiv2022

Robustness of Quantum Algorithms for Nonconvex Optimization

Recent results suggest that quantum computers possess the potential to speed up nonconvex optimization problems. However, a crucial factor for the implementation of quantum optimization algorithms is their robustness against experimental and statistical noises. In this paper, we systematically study quantum algorithms for finding an $ε$-approximate second-order stationary point ($ε$-SOSP) of a $d$-dimensional nonconvex function, a fundamental problem in nonconvex optimization, with noisy zeroth- or first-order oracles as inputs. We first prove that, up to noise of $O(ε^{10}/d^5)$, accelerated perturbed gradient descent with quantum gradient estimation takes $O(\log d/ε^{1.75})$ quantum queries to find an $ε$-SOSP. We then prove that perturbed gradient descent is robust to the noise of $O(ε^6/d^4)$ and $O(ε/d^{0.5+ζ})$ for $ζ>0$ on the zeroth- and first-order oracles, respectively, which provides a quantum algorithm with poly-logarithmic query complexity. We then propose a stochastic gradient descent algorithm using quantum mean estimation on the Gaussian smoothing of noisy oracles, which is robust to $O(ε^{1.5}/d)$ and $O(ε/\sqrt{d})$ noise on the zeroth- and first-order oracles, respectively. The quantum algorithm takes $O(d^{2.5}/ε^{3.5})$ and $O(d^2/ε^3)$ queries to the two oracles, giving a polynomial speedup over the classical counterparts. Moreover, we characterize the domains where quantum algorithms can find an $ε$-SOSP with poly-logarithmic, polynomial, or exponential number of queries in $d$, or the problem is information-theoretically unsolvable even by an infinite number of queries. In addition, we prove an $Ω(ε^{-12/7})$ lower bound in $ε$ for any randomized classical and quantum algorithm to find an $ε$-SOSP using either noisy zeroth- or first-order oracles.

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arXiv2022

Quantum simulation of real-space dynamics

Quantum simulation is a prominent application of quantum computers. While there is extensive previous work on simulating finite-dimensional systems, less is known about quantum algorithms for real-space dynamics. We conduct a systematic study of such algorithms. In particular, we show that the dynamics of a $d$-dimensional Schrödinger equation with $η$ particles can be simulated with gate complexity $\tilde{O}\bigl(ηd F \text{poly}(\log(g'/ε))\bigr)$, where $ε$ is the discretization error, $g'$ controls the higher-order derivatives of the wave function, and $F$ measures the time-integrated strength of the potential. Compared to the best previous results, this exponentially improves the dependence on $ε$ and $g'$ from $\text{poly}(g'/ε)$ to $\text{poly}(\log(g'/ε))$ and polynomially improves the dependence on $T$ and $d$, while maintaining best known performance with respect to $η$. For the case of Coulomb interactions, we give an algorithm using $η^{3}(d+η)T\text{poly}(\log(ηdTg'/(Δε)))/Δ$ one- and two-qubit gates, and another using $η^{3}(4d)^{d/2}T\text{poly}(\log(ηdTg'/(Δε)))/Δ$ one- and two-qubit gates and QRAM operations, where $T$ is the evolution time and the parameter $Δ$ regulates the unbounded Coulomb interaction. We give applications to several computational problems, including faster real-space simulation of quantum chemistry, rigorous analysis of discretization error for simulation of a uniform electron gas, and a quadratic improvement to a quantum algorithm for escaping saddle points in nonconvex optimization.

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arXiv2022

Quantum Algorithms for Sampling Log-Concave Distributions and Estimating Normalizing Constants

Given a convex function $f\colon\mathbb{R}^{d}\to\mathbb{R}$, the problem of sampling from a distribution $\propto e^{-f(x)}$ is called log-concave sampling. This task has wide applications in machine learning, physics, statistics, etc. In this work, we develop quantum algorithms for sampling log-concave distributions and for estimating their normalizing constants $\int_{\mathbb{R}^d}e^{-f(x)}\mathrm{d} x$. First, we use underdamped Langevin diffusion to develop quantum algorithms that match the query complexity (in terms of the condition number $κ$ and dimension $d$) of analogous classical algorithms that use gradient (first-order) queries, even though the quantum algorithms use only evaluation (zeroth-order) queries. For estimating normalizing constants, these algorithms also achieve quadratic speedup in the multiplicative error $ε$. Second, we develop quantum Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithms with query complexity $\widetilde{O}(κ^{1/2}d)$ and $\widetilde{O}(κ^{1/2}d^{3/2}/ε)$ for log-concave sampling and normalizing constant estimation, respectively, achieving polynomial speedups in $κ,d,ε$ over the best known classical algorithms by exploiting quantum analogs of the Monte Carlo method and quantum walks. We also prove a $1/ε^{1-o(1)}$ quantum lower bound for estimating normalizing constants, implying near-optimality of our quantum algorithms in $ε$.

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arXiv2022

Quantum Speedups of Optimizing Approximately Convex Functions with Applications to Logarithmic Regret Stochastic Convex Bandits

We initiate the study of quantum algorithms for optimizing approximately convex functions. Given a convex set ${\cal K}\subseteq\mathbb{R}^{n}$ and a function $F\colon\mathbb{R}^{n}\to\mathbb{R}$ such that there exists a convex function $f\colon\mathcal{K}\to\mathbb{R}$ satisfying $\sup_{x\in{\cal K}}|F(x)-f(x)|\leq ε/n$, our quantum algorithm finds an $x^{*}\in{\cal K}$ such that $F(x^{*})-\min_{x\in{\cal K}} F(x)\leqε$ using $\tilde{O}(n^{3})$ quantum evaluation queries to $F$. This achieves a polynomial quantum speedup compared to the best-known classical algorithms. As an application, we give a quantum algorithm for zeroth-order stochastic convex bandits with $\tilde{O}(n^{5}\log^{2} T)$ regret, an exponential speedup in $T$ compared to the classical $Ω(\sqrt{T})$ lower bound. Technically, we achieve quantum speedup in $n$ by exploiting a quantum framework of simulated annealing and adopting a quantum version of the hit-and-run walk. Our speedup in $T$ for zeroth-order stochastic convex bandits is due to a quadratic quantum speedup in multiplicative error of mean estimation.

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