Quantum-Inspired ML

ML: Machine Learning

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4 papers in the last four weeks, with none the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

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Latest papers 28

Sep 30, 2026cs.LG

QuanVI: Score-based Variational Inference via Quantum Maximally Mixed States

Score-based variational inference (VI) provides an alternative to Kullback--Leibler (KL)-based VI by minimizing the Fisher divergence between the variational distribution and the target. A prior score-VI approach formulates this optimization as an eigenvalue problem, with the variational distribution constructed from low-energy eigenstates. However, this eigenvalue-based formulation faces two high-dimensional obstacles: an intractably large parameter count due to exponential scaling and non-uniqueness of individual eigenvectors in degenerate or nearly degenerate low-energy subspaces. We propose QuanVI, a scalable quantum-inspired algorithm that combines a mixed-state density-operator formulation with a quantum tensor network (QTN) parameterization using the matrix product operator (MPO) structure. In degenerate low-energy subspaces, the density-operator formulation represents the subspace by its maximally mixed state rather than relying on a non-unique individual eigenvector, while the QTN parameterization compresses the density operator to avoid exponential parameter growth. Experiments and ablations show that QuanVI agrees with exact solutions in low dimensions and scales to high-dimensional synthetic and Bayesian posterior-approximation benchmarks, including challenging non-Gaussian targets.

Yuchen Cong, Zerui Tao, Chao Li +2

Juntendo University · RIKEN-AIP

Bayesian Inference Quantum-Inspired ML Variational Inference

Sep 15, 2026quant-ph

QiT: Quantum-Inspired Transformer for Visual Recognition Task

Quantum machine learning offers a compelling representational perspective: angle-encoded states inhabit Hilbert spaces in which periodic similarities and interactions can be expressed naturally. Realizing this perspective for visual recognition remains difficult, however, because present quantum neural networks are constrained by limited qubit counts, costly circuit simulation and measurement, noise, and unstable optimization on noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices. We investigate whether useful structural ideas from quantum models can instead be realized as scalable classical Transformer operations. We introduce QiT, a Quantum-inspired Transformer for vision tasks with three components: (i) angle-inspired encoding that maps image tokens to learned trigonometric Hilbert-space features analogous to quantum rotation-based state encoding; (ii) self-attention over these periodic features, inducing a classical cosine kernel approximated to quantum fidelity kernels; and (iii) gated multiplicative emulation, a trainable classical surrogate for interaction terms found in variational circuits. All components are differentiable tensor operations, so QiT claims neither quantum computation nor quantum speedup and retains the

\mathcal{O}(N^2D)

attention complexity of a standard Vision Transformer. Across image-classification benchmarks, QiT is competitive with a matched classical Transformer while avoiding the severe runtime cost observed for a small simulated quantum Transformer. QiT-B reaches 78.3% ImageNet-1K top-1 accuracy with 45.7M parameters and 11.5 GFLOPs. These results position QiT as a scalable baseline for isolating and evaluating quantum-motivated inductive biases in visual recognition.

Badri N. Patro, Vijay Agneeswaran

Microsoft

Vision Transformer Quantum-Inspired ML Image Classification

Sep 15, 2026eess.IV

Quantum-Inspired Trainable and Parameter-Efficient Tensor Networks for Image Inpainting

This work introduces quantum-inspired tensor-network circuits as trainable transforms for image inpainting. Among the proposed architectures, the diagonal quantum Fourier transform (QFT) relaxation is invertible with

O(N^2 \log N)

computational cost for

N\times N

images, inherently preserving minimum coherence throughout training via its circuit structure and eliminating the need for explicit coherence penalties. Unconstrained gradient-based phase optimization (Riemannian-optimization free) enables efficient learning from randomly sampled training data, allowing the learned transform to generalize to test images observed through fixed sampling masks. Numerical tests show that the learned models outperform fixed transforms and per-image optimization while matching the performance of much larger unitary architectures, yet with far fewer parameters.

Shiwen An, Konstantinos Slavakis

Institute of Science Tokyo, Department of Information and Communications Engineering, Yokohama, Japan

Tensor Networks Quantum-Inspired ML Image Inpainting

Sep 9, 2026quant-ph

A Quantum-Inspired Dequantization Method for Diagonally Weighted Matrix Functions: Application to Learning with Optimized Random Features

Quantum-inspired classical algorithms have dequantized several quantum machine learning routines by replacing quantum linear-algebra subroutines with classical counterparts. However, the sampler based on quantum singular value transformation (QSVT) for learning with optimized random features is not covered by existing dequantization frameworks, because the matrix to be inverted is not itself available through sampling access. In this work, we develop a classical algorithm to address this type of quantum-advantage candidate. Our method samples heavy indices, reduces the transformation to a small principal block, and outputs a sparse classical representation with operator-norm guarantees. Applying this method dequantizes the sampler for optimized random features, giving a classical sampler with prescribed accuracy and polynomially related runtime. These results show that the factorization underlying a quantum block encoding can itself provide sufficient classical structure even when sampling-and-query access to the composite matrix is unavailable.

Natsuto Isogai, Mio Murao, Hayata Yamasaki

Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan · Department of Computer Science, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Quantum-Inspired ML Random Feature Methods

Aug 5, 2026cs.LG

Quantum-Structured World Models (QSWMs) for Predictive Latent Dynamics

World models learn latent states that summarize interaction histories, evolve over time, and support prediction, simulation, or planning. Most existing world models represent these states using classical vectors, probability distributions, recurrent hidden states, or transformer activations. In this paper, we introduce Quantum-Structured World Models (QSWMs), a quantum-inspired framework for predictive world modeling with structured latent states, latent transition operators, and measurement-inspired decoding maps. We study whether mathematical structures inspired by quantum theory, such as complex-valued representations and density-matrix-like latents, provide useful inductive biases for world modeling. We establish three foundational properties: classical inclusion, predictive sufficiency, and structured compactness. We then instantiate complex-valued and density-matrix-like QSWM variants and evaluate them on elementary cellular automata against strong classical baselines. Results show promising local predictive potential for complex-valued QSWMs, while also revealing limitations in long-horizon rollout, density-matrix variants

Hailong Jiang, Emran Hossain, Feng Yu +3

Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH, USA · Kent State University · George Washington University

Latent Dynamics Modeling Quantum-Inspired ML Latent World Models

Jul 31, 2026cs.CV

LegoQ: Density-Matrix Representation Learning with Spectral-Spatial State Transitions for Hyperspectral Classification

Hyperspectral image classification is complicated by mixed pixels, spectral ambiguity, class imbalance, and limited annotations. Most current classifiers encode a pixel or patch as a deterministic vector and apply a linear or multilayer softmax head. Although effective for discrimination, this representation does not directly expose how mixed or uncertain a sample is. This paper presents \method, a classical density-matrix representation learning framework for hyperspectral images. The spectral bands are divided into groups and each group is mapped to a positive semi-definite, Hermitian, trace-normalized matrix state. A composable stack of spectral, spatial, and inter-group transitions then updates the states while repeatedly projecting them back to the valid state set. Instead of flattening the final features, \method\ aggregates the group states and compares them with learnable class-prototype density matrices through Uhlmann fidelity. The normalized eigenspectrum, von Neumann entropy, purity, and prototype fidelity provide sample-level diagnostics that are unavailable from a conventional vector head. On Indian Pines, ten runs yield an overall accuracy of

96.20\pm0.70\%

, an average accuracy of

95.57\pm1.29\%

, and a kappa coefficient of

95.66\pm0.80\%

. On WHU-Hi-LongKou, the best of ten runs reaches

97.52\%

overall accuracy. Classification maps and feature projections show that the transition stack produces compact and better separated class structures. The results support constrained matrix-state learning as a practical alternative to vector-only hyperspectral classification without requiring quantum hardware.

Weijia Cao, Xiaofei Yang, Fu Wang +2

Representation Learning Quantum-Inspired ML Hyperspectral Image Classification

Jul 30, 2026quant-ph

Complementary Matrix-Gated QKAN Fast-Weight Programmers for Quantum Dynamics Forecasting

Sequence models must decide what to write into memory and what to retain. In quantum and quantum-inspired sequence learning, nonlinear recurrent updates often require repeated circuit evaluations and sequential backpropagation through time, making long contexts costly. Gated fast-weight programmers (FWPs) based on quantum-inspired Kolmogorov-Arnold networks (QKANs) alleviate this bottleneck by storing context in time-varying fast parameters. However, their scalar gate applies one retention-write balance to every fast-state coordinate, forcing all parameters to share a memory timescale. We introduce Self-Modulating QKAN-based FWPs, which replace this broadcast gate with low-rank-generated element-wise modulation of the new-proposal branch, a bounded old-state branch, or both. We further propose Complementary Matrix Gating (CMG), which uses one sigmoid matrix gate to retain the old state and its complement to write the new proposal. CMG provides coordinate-wise memory control while preserving the bounded convex update and affine prefix-scan structure of scalar gating, at the modulation-head cost of a single-branch rule. We compare four self-modulating rules with scalar gating across four FWP architectures combining classical and QKAN-based slow and fast programmers. Across seven single-step forecasting benchmarks and five sequence lengths, CMG gives the most consistent improvements for architectures whose fast programmer incorporates a QKAN-based module. In direct multi-step forecasting of Jaynes-Cummings and transmon-resonator dynamics simulated with CUDA-Q Dynamics, CMG models maintain mean-squared errors on the order of 0.001 or lower across forecasting horizons of 4, 8, and 16 steps, while improving on their scalar-gated counterparts by at least 91.2%. These results establish coordinate-wise complementary modulation as a stable and effective update for QKAN-based FWPs.

Kuo-Chung Peng, Samuel Yen-Chi Chen, Jiun-Cheng Jiang +14

Department of Physics and Center for Theoretical Physics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan · Wells Fargo, New York, NY, USA · NVIDIA AI Technology Center, NVIDIA Corp., Taipei, Taiwan +10

Quantum-Inspired ML Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks

Jul 23, 2026quant-ph

Do emulated quantum circuits change what CNNs look at? Performance and explainability comparison in medical image classification

Numerous studies have analyzed the use of hybrid quantum-classical convolutional neural networks as a promising alternative to classical deep learning. However, network components on quantum hardware impose fundamental limitations, while the scalability of quantum circuits leads to trainability issues. In this work, we investigate whether small, classically-emulated quantum circuit components can play a meaningful role within complex models, offering an alternative to purely classical convolutional architectures. To this end, we present a systematic study of the effectiveness of a Hybrid Quantum-inspired Convolutional Neural Network (HQiCNN) compared with a parameter-matched classical Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) that differs only in an intermediate dense neural layer. Both models are evaluated on two real-world medical datasets while systematically varying the different hyperparameters, ensuring a fair model comparison that is both dataset and hyperparameter independent. The results show that no architecture consistently dominates the other: the HQiCNN achieves its largest gains in intermediate-data regimes, whereas the CNN reaches the highest accuracies for the largest training sets in both datasets. Furthermore, removing entanglement produces comparable performance while enabling substantially better scalability of quantum simulations, and richer observable sets become beneficial only when sufficient training data are available. Finally, we propose two SHAP-based explainability tools for comparing the predictions between both models,

|SHAP|

IoU and

EMD_{pos}

metric, to demonstrate that both architectures consistently attend to anatomically plausible regions. Thus, we provide a comprehensive benchmark showing that, under certain conditions, hybrid quantum-inspired models are an alternative that can offer benefits in practical tasks such as medical image classification.

Guillermo Rubiños Rodríguez, Martín Ottavianelli, Mateo Alonso +4

Instituto Tecnol´ogico de Galicia, Cant´on Grande 9, Planta 3, 15003 A Coru˜na, Spain · Centro Singular de Investigaci´on en Tecnolox´ıas Intelixentes (CiTIUS), Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, 15782, Spain · Department of Neuroradiology, LMU University Hospital, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Marchioninistraße 15, 81377 Munich, Germany +1

Quantum Convolutional Neural Networks Quantum-Inspired ML Neural Network Interpretability Medical Image Classification Explainable Medical Image Analysis

Jul 21, 2026cs.LG

Formulation-Level Auto-Tuning for QUBO-Based Machine Learning: A Case Study Across Multiple Quantum-Inspired Annealers

This paper presents an Optuna-based formulation-level auto-tuning framework for support vector machines (SVMs) implemented on multiple quantum-inspired annealers. In an annealing-based SVM, continuous dual variables are discretized and converted into a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) model. This transformation introduces three coupled classes of parameters: representation parameters-the encoding base B and bit depth K-which determine numerical range, resolution, and QUBO size; the RBF kernel parameter γ, which determines classifier geometry; and the equality-constraint penalty ξ, which controls feasibility and coefficient balance. We formulate their joint selection as a mixed discrete-continuous black-box optimization problem. The framework has two optimization levels: an inner annealer minimizes the generated QUBO, while an outer Optuna loop reconstructs the formulation in every trial and maximizes validation accuracy. The same solver-agnostic procedure is applied to Fixstars Amplify Annealing Engine, Toshiba SQBM+, and Fujitsu Digital Annealer using TPE and Gaussian-process samplers and is compared with conventional grid search. Experiments on linear and nonlinear classification tasks with 0-20% label noise show mean gains over grid search of approximately 0.8 and 2.1 percentage points, respectively. The results demonstrate that formulation quality and backend capability must be evaluated jointly and that task-level feedback can compensate for discretization, penalty imbalance, and backend-dependent approximate optimization.

Naoya Mizuki, Takahiro Katagiri, Daichi Mukunoki +1

Graduate School of Informatics, Nagoya University · Information Technology Center, Nagoya University

Black-Box Optimization Quantum-Inspired ML Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization Support Vector Machines Hyperparameter Optimization

Jul 8, 2026cs.LG

Image classification via a quantum-inspired strategy involving a mixture of experts

Pattern recognition problems arise in a variety of physical image processing situations, and convolutional neural networks are a popular scheme for the required feature extraction and classification tasks. The classical networks use diffusion-based smearing and block-wise pooling to downsample the image data and capture important structural features. In this work, we propose and demonstrate a more efficient quantum-inspired strategy involving a mixture of experts. It is a hybrid classical-quantum framework. The quantum part consists of amplitude encoding of the images, convolution using local unitary operations, multiple experts processing the same image with different parameters, and feature extraction using quantum stabiliser codes. The classical part then jointly processes the features extracted by different experts using a standard fully connected neural network for image class prediction. Using MNIST and Fashion-MNIST datasets as benchmarks, we demonstrate that the joint expert analysis outperforms the individual expert one, as well as reduces the failure rate of image class prediction by around a factor of two. The overhead of our quantum-inspired strategy is only moderate on GPU workstations, which makes our proposal a practical alternative to existing classical schemes. We also point out how the quantum part of our framework can be executed on a quantum processor.

Kumari Jyoti, Rohith Babu, Apoorva D. Patel

Centre for High Energy Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012

Hybrid Quantum-Classical ML Quantum-Inspired ML Mixture-of-Experts Models Image Classification

Jul 2, 2026eess.IV

Quantum-Inspired Vision: Leveraging Wave-Particle Duality for Low-Illumination Enhancement

This study provides a theoretical expansion of the recent Data Relativistic Uncertainty (DRU) framework by formalizing a physics-to-AI paradigm for image enhancement. By modeling images as probabilistic wave functions rather than deterministic states, the paradigm explicitly integrates wave-particle duality to illustrate the system flow of how DRU leverages the intrinsic physical uncertainty of light, a dimension requiring further theoretical discussion. Consequently, this paradigm provides a rigorous Explainable AI (XAI) approach that enhances the interpretability of how DRU mitigates illumination bias and maintains robustness against data noise.

Yiquan Gao

Heriot-Watt University

Explainable Artificial Intelligence Low-Light Image Enhancement Quantum-Inspired ML Physics-Informed ML

Jun 29, 2026quant-ph

RiverONE: Generating Knowledge-Intensive VLM by Simulated Quantum Machines

Quantum computing provides a powerful paradigm for representing and transforming high-dimensional information through superposition, entanglement, and measurement-induced nonlinear features. While current quantum hardware is not yet practical for direct large-scale vision-language model (VLM) inference, simulated quantum computation can be used during model construction to generate structured parameters for compact classical AI systems. We build RiverONE, a lightweight vision-language model for quantum calibration plot understanding, using simulated quantum computation. It employs a specialized visual encoder and an InternVL-based language backbone. To compensate for compression-induced information loss, we introduce quantum-generated parameters, which are materialized as classical tensors after training. This allows RiverONE to run entirely on classical GPUs at inference time, with no quantum hardware or runtime quantum simulation. With approximately 1.9 billion parameters, RiverONE achieves at least 95% of the performance of NVIDIA Ising Calibration 1 on quantum calibration plot understanding tasks while using less than 10% of its parameter count. These results suggest that simulated quantum computation can serve as a practical construction-stage mechanism for building lightweight, knowledge-intensive scientific VLMs. Our code is available at https://github.com/THeWakeSystems/RiverOne.

Xindian Ma, Xinyu Long, Yefei Zhang +11

Thewake RiverYtz Lab

Vision-Language Models Quantum-Inspired ML Chart Understanding

Jun 26, 2026quant-ph

Parameter-Efficient Quantum-Inspired Fast Weight Programmers for Traffic-Matrix Forecasting

Traffic matrices (TMs) capture network-wide origin-destination demand and are central to traffic engineering, yet accurate whole-matrix forecasting remains challenging when prediction must be performed under the memory, update, and training-budget constraints of online network control. This paper investigates whether compact quantum-inspired recurrent models can provide effective TM forecasts without relying on dedicated graph, transformer, or diffusion modules. We adapt gated quantum-inspired Kolmogorov-Arnold network fast-weight programmers (QKAN-FWPs) to direct multi-step Abilene TM forecasting, where each model predicts the next 20 five-minute frames of a 144-channel origin-destination (OD) matrix from a two-hour history. We benchmark three QKAN placement variants against a matched-size long short-term memory (LSTM) network, a larger LSTM, and a classical gated fast-weight programmer under a shared fixed-budget training protocol. Among the evaluated recurrent models, G-QKANFWP achieves the best pooled root-mean-square error (RMSE), while using only 22.4% of the larger LSTM. It also outperforms both the matched-size LSTM and the classical G-FWP baseline, indicating that the gain is not due to gated fast-weight framework alone. Convergence and channel-wise analyses further show that the quantum-inspired variants obtain lower validation-loss area under the learning curve (AULC) than matched-size recurrent baselines, while G-QKANFWP and GQKAN-FWP achieve substantially more OD-channel wins. These results identify a classical slow programmer with a quantum-inspired fast programmer as a promising accuracy-efficiency design for resource-conscious network traffic-matrix forecasting.

Kuo-Chung Peng, Jiun-Cheng Jiang, Chun-Hua Lin +3

Department of Physics and Center for Theoretical Physics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan · National Center for High-Performance Computing, National Institutes of Applied Research, Hsinchu, Taiwan · Wells Fargo, New York, NY, USA

Quantum-Inspired ML Spatiotemporal Forecasting

Jun 22, 2026cs.LG

Quantum-Inspired Contextual Learning for Sparse-Ring Fraud Detection in Dynamic Transaction Graphs

We present an exploratory benchmark and quantum-inspired modeling prototype for fraud screening in dynamic financial transaction graphs. Coordinated fraud may not be visible from individual transactions alone, but may emerge as a multi-period relational pattern. We focus on sparse-ring fraud, a stylized pattern in which a completed directed cycle is distributed across several days, requiring models to integrate evidence across both time and graph structure. We study this problem using a synthetic transaction simulator with completed sparse-ring injections and broken-ring decoys. Daily directed transaction graphs are aggregated into rolling windows and represented using raw graph features, persistent-homology summaries, or hybrid feature vectors that combine both. We compare a gated recurrent unit (GRU) baseline with quantum-inspired Contextual Machine Learning (CML) as sequence-level classifiers. Because the benchmark uses synthetic data, a modest sample size, and sequence-level labels, the results are exploratory. Within this scope, topology-only summaries are too compressed to solve the supervised ring-completion task by themselves, largely because they remove account-pair identity and edge direction. The strongest results come from hybrid representations that combine identity-preserving graph features with topological summaries. These findings suggest that topology is most useful as a contextual layer over dynamic graph features, and that CML is a promising candidate model for fraud patterns whose evidence is distributed across temporal and relational context.

Behnam Tonekaboni, Hiroshi Yamauchi

1Infleqtion Australia, Melbourne · 2SoftBank Corp., Japan, Tokyo

Financial Fraud Detection Quantum-Inspired ML Dynamic Graph Learning

May 23, 2026quant-ph

A Matched Spectral Benchmark of Quantum Inspired Feature Maps

Quantum machine learning is often motivated by the idea that quantum systems can expose useful high-dimensional structure that is difficult to access with classical models. We isolate one central component of this claim: the fixed data-encoding map. Amplitude, angle, and basis encoding are evaluated as deterministic feature maps for classical supervised learning under matched output dimensionality and strong classical controls. The benchmark compares these encodings against raw linear models, random Fourier features, polynomial features, PCA, RBF SVMs, and shallow neural networks across diverse classical datasets. Rather than treating performance as a single endpoint, we analyze the geometry of each representation through effective rank, condition number, centered kernel alignment, predictive performance, and practical overhead. The resulting picture is mechanistic: amplitude encoding can remove magnitude information through unit-sphere normalization, angle encoding can become geometrically redundant with raw linear features, and basis encoding can impose a binary Hamming geometry that is poorly aligned with smooth decision structure. These findings do not argue against quantum computation, however, they show that fixed quantum-inspired encoding geometry alone is not a reliable source of machine-learning advantage on classical data.

Toheeb Ogunade, Taofeek Kassim, Etinosa Osaro

Department of Computer Science, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria · Department of Physics, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria · Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA

Quantum Feature Maps Quantum Machine Learning Quantum-Inspired ML

May 14, 2026cs.LG

QuantFPFlow: Quantum Amplitude Estimation for Fokker--Planck Policy Optimisation in Continuous Reinforcement Learning

We introduce \textbf{QuantFPFlow}, a reinforcement learning framework that integrates quantum amplitude estimation into the Fokker--Planck~(FP) formulation of stochastic policy optimisation. Classical continuous-space RL agents must estimate the FP partition function

Z = \int e^{-V(\mathbf{x})/D}\,d\mathbf{x}

at cost

\calO(1/\varepsilon^{2})

; QuantFPFlow replaces this with a Grover-amplified amplitude estimator achieving

\calO(1/\varepsilon)

-- a provable quadratic speedup. While the full quantum acceleration requires fault-tolerant hardware, the quantum-inspired classical simulation demonstrated here already exhibits the

\calO(1/\varepsilon)

algorithmic structure. The estimated stationary distribution

\rhostar

drives a theoretically grounded exploration bonus

\Raug = \Renv + α\log(1/\rhostar(s))

. This bonus steers the agent toward globally optimal regions of multimodal reward landscapes while simultaneously constraining policy variance through FP diffusion matching. On a continuous-control task specifically designed to expose local-optima failure, QuantFPFlow achieves mean reward

1{,}295.7 \pm 423.2

versus

1{,}284.0 \pm 474.0

for Soft Actor-Critic~(SAC), while discovering the global optimum \textbf{10.4,% more frequently} (33.9,% vs.\ 30.7,%). Policy entropy remains near

H(π)\approx 6.5

,nats throughout training, whereas SAC collapses to

1.5

,nats, confirming that FP diffusion matching actively prevents premature convergence. Dimensionality experiments further show computational scaling of

\calO(d^{0.35})

for QuantFPFlow versus

\calO(d^{0.76})

for classical FP estimation.

Abraham Itzhak Weinberg

AI-WEINBERG, AI Experts, Tel Aviv, Israel

Reinforcement Learning Quantum-Inspired ML Quantum RL Policy Learning

May 13, 2026quant-ph

Winning Lottery Tickets in Neural Networks via a Quantum-Inspired Classical Algorithm

Quantum machine learning (QML) aims to accelerate machine learning tasks by exploiting quantum computation. Previous work studied a QML algorithm for selecting sparse subnetworks from large shallow neural networks. Instead of directly solving an optimization problem over a large-scale network, this algorithm constructs a sparse subnetwork by sampling hidden nodes from an optimized probability distribution defined using the ridgelet transform. The quantum algorithm performs this sampling in time

O(D)

in the data dimension

D

, whereas a naive classical implementation relies on handling exponentially many candidate nodes and hence takes

\exp[O(D)]

time. In this work, we construct and analyze a quantum-inspired fully classical algorithm for the same sampling task. We show that our algorithm runs in time

O(\operatorname{poly}(D))

, thereby removing the exponential dependence on

D

from the previous classical approach. Numerical simulations show that the proposed sampler achieves empirical risk comparable to exact sampling from the optimized distribution and substantially lower than sampling from the non-optimized uniform distribution, while also exhibiting exponentially improved runtime scaling compared with the conventional classical implementation. These successful dequantization results show that sparse subnetwork selection via optimized sampling can be achieved classically with polynomial data-dimension scaling on conventional computers without quantum hardware, providing an alternative to the existing quantum algorithm.

Natsuto Isogai, Hayata Yamasaki, Sho Sonoda +1

The University of Tokyo · RIKEN AIP

Quantum-Inspired ML Neural Network Pruning

May 10, 2026cs.LG

CTQWformer: A CTQW-based Transformer for Graph Classification

Graph Neural Networks (GNN) and Transformer-based architectures have achieved remarkable progress in graph learning, yet they still struggle to capture both global structural dependencies and model the dynamic information propagation. In this paper, we propose CTQWformer, a hybrid graph learning framework that integrates continuous-time quantum walks (CTQW) with GNN. CTQWformer employs a trainable Hamiltonian that fuses graph topology and node features, enabling physically grounded modeling of quantum walk dynamics that captures rich and intricate graph structure information. The extracted CTQW-based representations are incorporated into two complementary modules:(i) a Graph Transformer module that embeds final-time propagation probabilities as structural biases in the self-attention mechanism, and (ii) a Graph Recurrent Module that captures temporal evolution patterns with bidirectional recurrent networks. Extensive experiments on benchmark graph classification datasets demonstrate that CTQWformer outperforms graph kernel and GNN-based methods, demonstrating the potential of integrating quantum dynamics into trainable deep learning frameworks for graph representation learning. To the best of our knowledge, CTQWformer is the first hybrid CTQW-based Transformer, integrating CTQW-derived structural bias with temporal evolution modeling to advance graph learning.

Zhan Li, Wuqing Yu, Yusen Wu +1

school of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

Graph Representation Learning Quantum-Inspired ML Graph Classification Graph Transformer

May 9, 2026cs.CL

A Quantum Inspired Variational Kernel and Explainable AI Framework for Cross Region Solar and Wind Energy Forecasting

Reliable short horizon forecasting of solar and wind generation is a structural prerequisite of any modern power system yet most published forecasters are tuned and evaluated on a single climatic regime and most algorithmic novelty has been concentrated either on classical recurrent networks or on monolithic foundation models that combine forecasting and explanation We develop a four stage hybrid framework that separates these concerns The first stage acquires hourly generation irradiance and surface weather records through public application programming interfaces The second stage trains three classical baselines autoregressive integrated moving average gradient boosted regression trees and a two layer long short term memory network and produces a strong point forecast together with a residual error series The third stage corrects the residual through a quantum inspired variational kernel built on a six qubit hardware efficient ansatz with three repeated entangling layers The fourth stage uses generative artificial intelligence strictly as an explainability layer that reads the measured benchmark numbers and produces a structured natural language interpretation Across three regions drawn from open public archives Iberian solar North Sea wind and a mixed Texas trace the proposed configuration stays within one percentage point of the strongest classical baseline on the in domain forecasting task and the quantum inspired kernel separates calm and stormy weather regimes with a Fisher discriminant ratio approximately fifteen fold higher than a tuned radial basis kernel

Pavan Manjunath, Thomas Prufer

Independent Research Scholar, Germany

Time Series Forecasting Quantum-Inspired ML Solar Power Forecasting Quantum Kernel Methods Spatiotemporal Forecasting Wind Power Forecasting+1

May 8, 2026cs.CE

Exploring the non-convexity in machine learning using quantum-inspired optimization

The escalating complexity of modern machine learning necessitates solving challenging non-convex optimization problems, particularly in high-dimensional regimes and scenarios contaminated by gross outliers. Traditional approaches, relying on convex relaxations or specialized local search heuristics, frequently succumb to suboptimal local minima and fail to recover the true underlying discrete structures. In this paper, we propose treating these non-convex challenges as a global search problem and introduce a unified framework based on Quantum-Inspired Evolutionary Optimization (QIEO). By leveraging a probabilistic representation inspired by quantum superposition, QIEO maintains a global view of the search space, enabling it to tunnel through local optima that trap conventional gradient-based and greedy solvers. We comprehensively evaluate QIEO across diverse non-convex applications, including sparse signal recovery (gene expression analysis and compressed sensing) and robust linear regression. Extensive benchmarking against state-of-the-art continuous solvers (ADAM, Differential Evolution), classical metaheuristics (Genetic Algorithms), and specialized non-convex algorithms (Iterative Hard Thresholding) demonstrates that QIEO consistently achieves superior structural fidelity, lower mean squared error, and enhanced robustness without support inflation. Our findings suggest that embracing a quantum-inspired global search provides a resilient, unified paradigm for overcoming the inherent intractability of discrete nonconvex machine learning landscapes.

Kandula Eswara Sai Kumar, Parth Dhananjay Danve, Abhishek Chopra +1

1*BosonQ Psi (BQP), New York, USA.

Evolutionary Optimization Quantum-Inspired ML Nonconvex Optimization Linear Regression

May 7, 2026cs.LG

Gated QKAN-FWP: Scalable Quantum-inspired Sequence Learning

Fast Weight Programmers (FWPs) encode temporal dependencies through dynamically updated parameters rather than recurrent hidden states. Quantum FWPs (QFWPs) extend this idea with variational quantum circuits (VQCs), but existing implementations rely on multi-qubit architectures that are difficult to scale on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices and expensive to simulate classically. We propose gated QKAN-FWP, a fast-weight framework that integrates FWP with Quantum-inspired Kolmogorov-Arnold Network (QKAN) using single-qubit data re-uploading circuits as learnable nonlinear activation, known as DatA Re-Uploading ActivatioN (DARUAN). We further introduce a scalar-gated fast-weight update rule that stabilizes parameter evolution, supported by a theoretical analysis of its adaptive memory kernel, geometric boundedness, and parallelizable gradient paths. We evaluate the framework across time-series benchmarks, MiniGrid reinforcement learning, and highlight real-world solar cycle forecasting as our main practical result. In the long-horizon setting with 528-month input window and 132-month forecast horizon, our 12.5k-parameter model achieves lower scaled Mean Square Error (MSE), peak amplitude error, and peak timing error than a suite of classical recurrent baselines with up to 13x more parameters, including Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks (25.9k-89.1k parameters), WaveNet-LSTM (167k), Vanilla recurrent neural network (11.5k), and a Modified Echo State Network (132k). To validate NISQ compatibility, we further deploy the trained fast programmer on IonQ and IBM Quantum processors, recovering forecasting accuracy within 0.1% relative MSE of the noiseless simulator at 1024 shots. These results position gated QKAN-FWP as a scalable, parameter-efficient, and NISQ-compatible approach to quantum-inspired sequence modeling.

Kuo-Chung Peng, Samuel Yen-Chi Chen, Jiun-Cheng Jiang +16

Department of Physics and Center for Theoretical Physics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan · National Center for High-Performance Computing, National Institutes of Applied Research, Hsinchu, Taiwan · Wells Fargo, New York, NY, USA +11

Time Series Forecasting Quantum-Inspired ML Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks Variational Quantum Circuits

May 6, 2026quant-ph

Generative Quantum-inspired Kolmogorov-Arnold Eigensolver

High-performance computing (HPC) is increasingly important for scalable quantum chemistry workflows that couple classical generative models, quantum circuit simulation, and selected configuration interaction postprocessing. We present the generative quantum-inspired Kolmogorov-Arnold eigensolver (GQKAE), a parameter-efficient extension of the generative quantum eigensolver (GQE) for quantum chemistry. GQKAE replaces the parameter-heavy feed-forward network components in GPT-style generative eigensolvers with hybrid quantum-inspired Kolmogorov-Arnold network modules, forming a compact HQKANsformer backbone. The method preserves autoregressive operator selection and the quantum-selected configuration interaction evaluation pipeline, while using single-qubit DatA Re-Uploading ActivatioN modules to provide expressive nonlinear mappings. Numerical benchmarks on H4, N2, LiH, C2H6, H2O, and the H2O dimer show that GQKAE achieves chemical accuracy comparable to the GPT-based GQE architecture, while reducing trainable parameters and memory by approximately 66% and improving wall-time performance. For strongly correlated systems such as N2 and LiH, GQKAE also improves convergence behavior and final energy errors. These results indicate that quantum-inspired Kolmogorov-Arnold networks can reduce classical-side overhead while preserving circuit-generation quality, offering a scalable route for HPC-quantum co-design on near-term quantum platforms.

Yu-Cheng Lin, Yu-Chao Hsu, I-Shan Tsai +9

Department of Electrophysics, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. · National Center for High-Performance Computing, National Institutes of Applied Research, Hsinchu, Taiwan · Cross College Elite Program, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan +7

Quantum Generative Modeling Quantum Chemistry Hybrid Quantum-Classical ML Quantum-Inspired ML Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks

Apr 29, 2026cs.CV

QYOLO: Lightweight Object Detection via Quantum Inspired Shared Channel Mixing

The rapid advancement of object detection architectures has positioned single stage detectors as the dominant solution for real-time visual perception. A primary source of computational overhead in these models lies in the deep backbone stages, where C2f bottleneck modules at high stride levels accumulate a disproportionate share of parameters due to quadratic scaling with channel width. This work introduces QYOLO, a quantum-inspired channel mixing framework that achieves genuine architectural compression by replacing the two deepest backbone C2f modules at P4/16 (512 channels) and P5/32 (1024 channels) with a compact QMixBlock. The proposed block performs global channel recalibration through a sinusoidal mixing mechanism with shared learnable parameters across both backbone stages, enforcing consistent channel importance without requiring independent per-stage parameter sets. The neck and detection head remain fully classical and unchanged. Evaluation on the VisDrone2019 benchmark demonstrates that QYOLOv8n achieves a 20.2% reduction in parameter count (3.01M to 2.40M) and 12.3% GFLOPs reduction with only 0.4 pp mAP@50 degradation. QYOLOv8s achieves 21.8% reduction with 0.1 pp degradation. When combined with knowledge distillation, full accuracy parity is recovered at no cost to compression. An expanded backbone plus neck variant achieved 38 to 41% reduction at the cost of greater accuracy degradation, motivating the backbone-only final design.

Garvit Kumar Mittal, Sahil Tomar, Sandeep Kumar

Central Research Laboratory Bharat Electronics Limited Ghaziabad, India

Efficient Neural Network Inference Quantum-Inspired ML Object Detection Neural Network Compression

Apr 20, 2026cs.AI

Quantum inspired qubit qutrit neural networks for real time financial forecasting

This research investigates the performance and efficacy of machine learning models in stock prediction, comparing Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), Quantum Qubit-based Neural Networks (QQBNs), and Quantum Qutrit-based Neural Networks (QQTNs). By outlining methodologies, architectures, and training procedures, the study highlights significant differences in training times and performance metrics across models. While all models demonstrate robust accuracies above 70%, the Quantum Qutrit-based Neural Network consistently outperforms with advantages in risk-adjusted returns, measured by the Sharpe ratio, greater consistency in prediction quality through the Information Coefficient, and enhanced robustness under varying market conditions. The QQTN not only surpasses its classical and qubit-based counterparts in multiple quantitative and qualitative metrics but also achieves comparable performance with significantly reduced training times. These results showcase the promising prospects of Quantum Qutrit-based Neural Networks in practical financial applications, where real-time processing is critical. By achieving superior accuracy, efficiency, and adaptability, the proposed models underscore the transformative potential of quantum-inspired approaches, paving the way for their integration into computationally intensive fields.

Kanishk Bakshi, Kathiravan Srinivasan

School of Computer Science and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore 632014, India.

Quantitative Finance Time Series Forecasting Quantum-Inspired ML Quantum Neural Networks

Apr 16, 2026cs.LG

How Embeddings Shape Graph Neural Networks: Classical vs Quantum-Oriented Node Representations

Node embeddings act as the information interface for graph neural networks, yet their empirical impact is often reported under mismatched backbones, splits, and training budgets. This paper provides a controlled benchmark of embedding choices for graph classification, comparing classical baselines with quantum-oriented node representations under a unified pipeline. We evaluate two classical baselines alongside quantum-oriented alternatives, including a circuit-defined variational embedding and quantum-inspired embeddings computed via graph operators and linear-algebraic constructions. All variants are trained and tested with the same backbone, stratified splits, identical optimization and early stopping, and consistent metrics. Experiments on five different TU datasets and on QM9 converted to classification via target binning show clear dataset dependence: quantum-oriented embeddings yield the most consistent gains on structure-driven benchmarks, while social graphs with limited node attributes remain well served by classical baselines. The study highlights practical trade-offs between inductive bias, trainability, and stability under a fixed training budget, and offers a reproducible reference point for selecting quantum-oriented embeddings in graph learning.

Nouhaila Innan, Antonello Rosato, Alberto Marchisio +1

eBRAIN Lab, Division of Engineering, New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), Abu Dhabi, UAE · Department of Information Engineering, Electronics and Telecommunications, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy · Center for Quantum and Topological Systems (CQTS), NYUAD Research Institute, NYUAD, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Quantum Machine Learning Quantum-Inspired ML Graph Classification Graph Embedding

Mar 16, 2026cs.LG

PhasorFlow: A Python Library for Unit Circle Based Computing

We present PhasorFlow, an open-source Python library for computing on the

S^1

unit circle. Inputs are encoded as complex phasors

z=e^{iφ}

on the

N

-torus (

\mathbb{T}^N

); as computation proceeds through unitary wave-interference gates, global norm is preserved while components drift into

\mathbb{C}^N

, letting algorithms leverage continuous geometric gradients. PhasorFlow makes three contributions. First, we formalize the Phasor Circuit model (

N

threads,

M

gates) with a 22-gate library spanning standard-unitary, non-linear, neuromorphic, and encoding operations under full matrix-algebra simulation. Second, we introduce the Variational Phasor Circuit (VPC), a trainable phase-native classifier analogous to variational quantum circuits. Third, we introduce the Phasor Transformer block and Large Phasor Model (LPM), replacing

QK^TV

attention with a parameter-free DFT token-mixing layer. We validate the framework on financial volatility detection, neuromorphic associative memory, neural binding, period finding, and algorithmic logic applications that are unique to the library. This positions unit-circle computing as a deterministic, lightweight paradigm on classical hardware. Available at https://github.com/mindverse-computing/phasorflow.

Dibakar Sigdel, Namuna Panday

Mindverse Computing LLC, Lynnwood, WA 98087

Complex-Valued Neural Networks Quantum-Inspired ML

Nov 7, 2025cs.LG

QiVC-Net: Quantum-Inspired Variational Convolutional Network, with Application to Biosignal Classification

In this paper, a learning framework is introduced which incorporates principles of probabilistic inference, variational optimization, and geometry-preserving operations inspired by quantum transformations. The central innovation of this quantum-inspired variational convolution (QiVC) lies in its quantum-inspired rotated ensemble (QiRE) mechanism. QiRE performs differentiable low-dimensional subspace rotations of convolutional weights. By drawing a mathematical analogy from unitary evolution, this approach enables structured uncertainty modeling that respects the intrinsic geometry of the parameter space. To demonstrate its practical potential, the concept is instantiated in a QiVC-based convolutional network (QiVC-Net) and evaluated in the context of biosignal classification, focusing on phonocardiogram (PCG) recordings. The proposed QiVC-Net integrates an architecture in which the QiVC layer does not introduce additional parameters, instead performing an ensemble rotation of the convolutional weights through a structured mechanism ensuring robustness without added highly computational burden. Experiments on two benchmark datasets, PhysioNet CinC 2016 and PhysioNet CirCor DigiScope 2022, show that QiVC-Net achieves state-of-the-art performance, reaching accuracies of 97.84% and 97.89%, respectively. These findings highlight the versatility of the QiVC framework and its promise for advancing uncertainty-aware modeling in real-world biomedical signal analysis. The implementation of the QiVConv layer is available in GitHub for public use.

Amin Golnari, Jamileh Yousefi, Reza Moheimani +1

College of Engineering and Computer Science VinUniversity Hanoi, Vietnam · Shannon School of Business Cape Breton University Sydney, NS, Canada · Faculty of Computer Science Chemnitz University of Technology Chemnitz, Germany +2

Uncertainty Quantification Quantum-Inspired ML

Sep 17, 2025quant-ph

Quantum Variational Activation Functions Empower Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks

Variational quantum circuits (VQCs) are central to quantum machine learning, while recent progress in Kolmogorov-Arnold networks (KANs) highlights the power of learnable activation functions. We unify these directions by introducing the quantum variational activation function (QVAF), a general framework in which parameterized quantum circuits serve as learnable activation functions; in this work we study an efficient single-qubit instantiation called DatA Re-Uploading ActivatioN (DARUAN). We show that DARUAN with trainable data-preprocessing weights can realize an exponentially growing accessible frequency support with the number of re-uploading repetitions; for an explicit geometric choice of these weights, this gives a capacity-level exponential parameter reduction relative to independently parameterized Fourier activations. Embedding DARUAN into KAN yields the quantum-inspired Kolmogorov-Arnold Network (QKAN), which retains the interpretability of the KAN architecture while improving parameter efficiency, expressivity, and generalization. We further introduce layer extension and the hybrid QKAN (HQKAN) architecture to improve scalability and computational efficiency, enabling QKAN modules to act as compact replacements for multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs) in large-scale models. We provide theoretical analysis and extensive experiments on function regression, image classification, and autoregressive generative language modeling, demonstrating the efficiency and scalability of QKANs. Because the single-qubit circuits are efficiently simulable on classical quantum simulators, QKANs have quantum-inspired advantage in parameter efficiency and training stability; DARUANs and QKANs serve as present-day validation of the QVAF concept, and the trained DARUANs are directly executable and feasible on current noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) hardware for inference validation.

Jiun-Cheng Jiang, Morris Yu-Chao Huang, Tianlong Chen +1

Department of Physics and Center for Theoretical Physics, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106319, Taiwan · Physics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106319, Taiwan · Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC 27514, USA +1

Quantum Machine Learning Quantum-Inspired ML Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks Variational Quantum Circuits