Physicists uncover similarities between classical and quantum machine learning

Physicists have found that the structure of certain types of quantum learning algorithms is very similar to their classical counterparts—a finding that will help scientists further develop the quantum versions. Classical machine learning algorithms are currently used for performing complex computational tasks, such as pattern recognition or classification in large amounts of data, and constitute a crucial part of many modern technologies. The aim of quantum learning algorithms is to bring these features into scenarios where information is in a fully quantum form.

The scientists, Alex Monràs at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain; Gael Sentís at the University of the Basque Country, Spain, and the University of Siegen, Germany; and Peter Wittek at ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Science, Spain, and the University of Borås, Sweden, have published a paper on their results in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.