Quantum reservoir computing with classical and nonclassical states in an integrated optical circuit

Quantum reservoir computing (QRC) is a hardware-implementation-friendly quantum neural network scheme with minimal physical system requirements and a proven advantage over classical counterparts. We use an extension of the positive-P phase space method to efficiently simulate a bosonic, linear silicon-chip based QRC system excited with a single nonclassical state, a "kitten" state. In combination with input-encoding coherent states, our method allows to obtain exact results for all correlation functions without Hilbert space cutoff. Surprisingly, we find that such a setting - where the only "quantumness" derives from a single input mode, is sufficient to obtain significant (over 9-fold) reduction of classification error over the classical counterpart. Our work provides a promising direction toward efficient quantum computation with accessible optical hardware.