Variational Quantum Unsampling on a Quantum Photonic Processor

Abstract

Quantum algorithms for Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) machines have recently emerged as new promising routes towards demonstrating near-term quantum advantage (or supremacy) over classical systems. In these systems samples are typically drawn from probability distributions which --- under plausible complexity-theoretic conjectures --- cannot be efficiently generated classically. Rather than first define a physical system and then determine computational features of the output state, we ask the converse question: given direct access to the quantum state, what features of the generating system can we efficiently learn? In this work we introduce the Variational Quantum Unsampling (VQU) protocol, a nonlinear quantum neural network approach for verification and inference of near-term quantum circuits outputs. In our approach one can variationally train a quantum operation to unravel the action of an unknown unitary on a known input state; essentially learning the inverse of the black-box quantum dynamics. While the principle of our approach is platform independent, its implementation will depend on the unique architecture of a specific quantum processor. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the VQU protocol on a quantum photonic processor. Alongside quantum verification, our protocol has broad applications; including optimal quantum measurement and tomography, quantum sensing and imaging, and ansatz validation.