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Paper 1

Learning to Decode the Surface Code with a Recurrent, Transformer-Based Neural Network

Johannes Bausch, Andrew W Senior, Francisco J H Heras, Thomas Edlich, Alex Davies, Michael Newman, Cody Jones, Kevin Satzinger, Murphy Yuezhen Niu, Sam Blackwell, George Holland, Dvir Kafri, Juan Atalaya, Craig Gidney, Demis Hassabis, Sergio Boixo, Hartmut Neven, Pushmeet Kohli

Year

2023

Journal

arXiv preprint

DOI

arXiv:2310.05900

arXiv

2310.05900

Quantum error-correction is a prerequisite for reliable quantum computation. Towards this goal, we present a recurrent, transformer-based neural network which learns to decode the surface code, the leading quantum error-correction code. Our decoder outperforms state-of-the-art algorithmic decoders on real-world data from Google's Sycamore quantum processor for distance 3 and 5 surface codes. On distances up to 11, the decoder maintains its advantage on simulated data with realistic noise including cross-talk, leakage, and analog readout signals, and sustains its accuracy far beyond the 25 cycles it was trained on. Our work illustrates the ability of machine learning to go beyond human-designed algorithms by learning from data directly, highlighting machine learning as a strong contender for decoding in quantum computers.

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Paper 2

Quantum Approximate Bayesian Optimization Algorithms with Two Mixers and Uncertainty Quantification

Jungin E. Kim, Yan Wang

Year

2023

Journal

arXiv preprint

DOI

arXiv:2307.16335

arXiv

2307.16335

The searching efficiency of the quantum approximate optimization algorithm is dependent on both the classical and quantum sides of the algorithm. Recently a quantum approximate Bayesian optimization algorithm (QABOA) that includes two mixers was developed, where surrogate-based Bayesian optimization is applied to improve the sampling efficiency of the classical optimizer. A continuous-time quantum walk mixer is used to enhance exploration, and the generalized Grover mixer is also applied to improve exploitation. In this paper, an extension of QABOA is proposed to further improve its searching efficiency. The searching efficiency is enhanced through two aspects. First, two mixers, including one for exploration and the other for exploitation, are applied in an alternating fashion. Second, uncertainty of the quantum circuit is quantified with a new quantum Matérn kernel based on the kurtosis of the basis state distribution, which increases the chance of obtaining the optimum. The proposed new two-mixer QABOA$'$s with and without uncertainty quantification are compared with three single-mixer QABOA$'$s on five discrete and four mixed-integer problems. The results show that the proposed two-mixer QABOA with uncertainty quantification has the best performance in efficiency and consistency for five out of the nine tested problems. The results also show that QABOA with the generalized Grover mixer performs the best among the single-mixer algorithms, thereby demonstrating the benefit of exploitation and the importance of dynamic exploration-exploitation balance in improving searching efficiency.

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