Classical and quantum reservoir computing: development and applications in machine learning

TL;DR

This paper explores the development and application of classical and quantum reservoir computing techniques, demonstrating their effectiveness in diverse domains such as agriculture forecasting and quantum system simulation.

Contribution

It introduces novel reservoir computing frameworks for predicting agricultural prices, simulating quantum systems, and optimizing quantum circuit designs for machine learning.

Findings

Reservoir computing effectively predicts agricultural prices.

Quantum reservoir computing efficiently propagates quantum wavefunctions.

Higher complexity quantum circuits improve machine learning performance.

Abstract

Reservoir computing is a novel machine learning algorithm that uses a nonlinear dynamical system to efficiently learn complex temporal patterns from data. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the principles of reservoir computing and develop state-of-the-art variants capable of addressing diverse applications in machine learning. The research demonstrates the algorithm's robustness and adaptability across very different domains, including agricultural time series forecasting and the time propagation of quantum systems. The first contribution of this thesis consists in developing a reservoir computing-based methodology to predict future agricultural product prices, which is crucial for ensuring the sustainability of the food market. The next contribution of the thesis is devoted to solving the Schr\"odinger equation for complex quantum systems. A novel reservoir computing framework is proposed to efficiently propagate quantum wavefunctions in time, enabling the computation of all eigenstates of a quantum system within a specific energy range. This approach is used to study prominent systems in the field of quantum chemistry and quantum chaos. The last contribution of this thesis focuses on optimizing algorithm designs for quantum reservoir computing. The results demonstrate that families of quantum circuits with higher complexity, according to the majorization criterion, yield superior performance in quantum machine learning. Moreover, the impact of quantum noise on the algorithm performance is evaluated, revealing that the amplitude damping noise can actually be beneficial for the performance of quantum reservoir computing, while the depolarizing and phase damping noise should be prioritized for correction. Furthermore, the optimal design of quantum reservoirs is employed to construct a hybrid quantum-classical neural network that tackles a fundamental problem in drug design.