Noise-Induced Equalization in quantum learning models

Abstract

Quantum noise is known to strongly affect quantum computation, thus potentially limiting the performance of currently available quantum processing units. Even learning models based on variational quantum algorithms, which were designed to cope with the limitations of state-of-the art noisy hardware capabilities, are affected by noise-induced barren plateaus, arising when the noise level becomes too strong. However, the generalization performances of such quantum machine learning algorithms can also be positively influenced by a proper level of noise, despite its generally detrimental effects. Here, we propose a pre-training procedure to determine the quantum noise level leading to desirable optimisation landscape properties. We show that an optimized level of quantum noise induces an ``equalization'' of the directions in the Riemannian manifold, flattening(/enhancing) the initially steep(/shallow) ones by redistributing sensitivity across its principal eigen-directions. We analyse this noise-induced equalization through the lens of the Quantum Fisher Information Matrix, thus providing a recipe that allows to estimate the noise level inducing the strongest equalization. We finally benchmark these conclusions with extensive numerical simulations providing evidence of the beneficial noise effects in the neighborhood of the best equalization, often leading to improved generalization.