Towards Practical Quantum Neural Network Diagnostics with Neural Tangent Kernels

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Scala, Francesco, Zoufal, Christa, Gerace, Dario, Tacchino, Francesco
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Scala, Francesco
Zoufal, Christa
Gerace, Dario
Tacchino, Francesco
author_facet Scala, Francesco
Zoufal, Christa
Gerace, Dario
Tacchino, Francesco
contents Knowing whether a Quantum Machine Learning model would perform well on a given dataset before training it can help to save critical resources. However, gathering a priori information about model performance (e.g., training speed, critical hyperparameters, or inference capabilities on unseen data) is a highly non-trivial task, in general. Recently, the Quantum Neural Tangent Kernel (QNTK) has been proposed as a powerful mathematical tool to describe the behavior of Quantum Neural Network (QNN) models. In this work, we propose a practical framework allowing to employ the QNTK for QNN performance diagnostics. More specifically, we show how a critical learning rate and a characteristic decay time for the average training error can be estimated from the spectrum of the QNTK evaluated at the initialization stage. We then show how a QNTK-based kernel formula can be used to analyze, up to a first-order approximation, the expected inference capabilities of the quantum model under study. We validate our proposed approach with extensive numerical simulations, using different QNN architectures and datasets. Our results demonstrate that QNTK diagnostics yields accurate approximations of QNN behavior for sufficiently deep circuits, can provide insights for shallow QNNs, and enables detecting - hence also addressing - potential shortcomings in model design.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_01966
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards Practical Quantum Neural Network Diagnostics with Neural Tangent Kernels
Scala, Francesco
Zoufal, Christa
Gerace, Dario
Tacchino, Francesco
Quantum Physics
Knowing whether a Quantum Machine Learning model would perform well on a given dataset before training it can help to save critical resources. However, gathering a priori information about model performance (e.g., training speed, critical hyperparameters, or inference capabilities on unseen data) is a highly non-trivial task, in general. Recently, the Quantum Neural Tangent Kernel (QNTK) has been proposed as a powerful mathematical tool to describe the behavior of Quantum Neural Network (QNN) models. In this work, we propose a practical framework allowing to employ the QNTK for QNN performance diagnostics. More specifically, we show how a critical learning rate and a characteristic decay time for the average training error can be estimated from the spectrum of the QNTK evaluated at the initialization stage. We then show how a QNTK-based kernel formula can be used to analyze, up to a first-order approximation, the expected inference capabilities of the quantum model under study. We validate our proposed approach with extensive numerical simulations, using different QNN architectures and datasets. Our results demonstrate that QNTK diagnostics yields accurate approximations of QNN behavior for sufficiently deep circuits, can provide insights for shallow QNNs, and enables detecting - hence also addressing - potential shortcomings in model design.
title Towards Practical Quantum Neural Network Diagnostics with Neural Tangent Kernels
topic Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.01966