Despite the mounting anticipation for the quantum revolution, the success of Quantum Machine Learning (QML) in the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era hinges on a largely unexplored factor: the generalization error bound, a cornerstone of robust and reliable machine learning models. Current QML research, while exploring novel algorithms and applications extensively, is predominantly situated in the context of noise-free, ideal quantum computers. However, Quantum Circuit (QC) operations in NISQ-era devices are susceptible to various noise sources and errors. In this article, we conduct a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) to explore the state-of-the-art generalization bound for supervised QML in NISQ-era and analyze the latest practices in the field. Our study systematically summarizes the existing computational platforms with quantum hardware, datasets, optimization techniques, and the common properties of the bounds found in the literature. We further present the performance accuracy of various approaches in classical benchmark datasets like the MNIST and IRIS datasets. The SMS also highlights the limitations and challenges in QML in the NISQ era and discusses future research directions to advance the field. Using a detailed Boolean operators query in five reliable indexers, we collected 544 papers and filtered them to a small set of 37 relevant articles. This filtration was done following the best practice of SMS with well-defined research questions and inclusion and exclusion criteria.

A Quantum Natural Gradient (QNG) algorithm for optimization of variational quantum circuits has been proposed recently. In this study, we employ the Langevin equation with a QNG stochastic force to demonstrate that its discrete-time solution gives a generalized form of the above-specified algorithm, which we call Momentum-QNG. Similar to other optimization algorithms with the momentum term, such as the Stochastic Gradient Descent with momentum, RMSProp with momentum and Adam, Momentum-QNG is more effective to escape local minima and plateaus in the variational parameter space and, therefore, achieves a better convergence behavior compared to the basic QNG. Our open-source code is available at https://github.com/borbysh/Momentum-QNG

We propose ratio divergence (RD) learning for discrete energy-based models, a method that utilizes both training data and a tractable target energy function. We apply RD learning to restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs), which are a minimal model that satisfies the universal approximation theorem for discrete distributions. RD learning combines the strength of both forward and reverse Kullback-Leibler divergence (KLD) learning, effectively addressing the "notorious" issues of underfitting with the forward KLD and mode-collapse with the reverse KLD. Since the summation of forward and reverse KLD seems to be sufficient to combine the strength of both approaches, we include this learning method as a direct baseline in numerical experiments to evaluate its effectiveness. Numerical experiments demonstrate that RD learning significantly outperforms other learning methods in terms of energy function fitting, mode-covering, and learning stability across various discrete energy-based models. Moreover, the performance gaps between RD learning and the other learning methods become more pronounced as the dimensions of target models increase.

Drug discovery and development is a highly complex and costly endeavor, typically requiring over a decade and substantial financial investment to bring a new drug to market. Traditional computer-aided drug design (CADD) has made significant progress in accelerating this process, but the development of quantum computing offers potential due to its unique capabilities. This paper discusses the integration of quantum computing into drug discovery and development, focusing on how quantum technologies might accelerate and enhance various stages of the drug development cycle. Specifically, we explore the application of quantum computing in addressing challenges related to drug discovery, such as molecular simulation and the prediction of drug-target interactions, as well as the optimization of clinical trial outcomes. By leveraging the inherent capabilities of quantum computing, we might be able to reduce the time and cost associated with bringing new drugs to market, ultimately benefiting public health.

To efficiently express tensor data using the Tucker format, a critical task is to minimize the multilinear rank such that the model would not be over-flexible and lead to overfitting. Due to the lack of rank minimization tools in tensor, existing works connect Tucker multilinear rank minimization to trace norm minimization of matrices unfolded from the tensor data. While these formulations try to exploit the common aim of identifying the low-dimensional structure of the tensor and matrix, this paper reveals that existing trace norm-based formulations in Tucker completion are inefficient in multilinear rank minimization. We further propose a new interpretation of Tucker format such that trace norm minimization is applied to the factor matrices of the equivalent representation, rather than some matrices unfolded from tensor data. Based on the newly established problem formulation, a fixed point iteration algorithm is proposed, and its convergence is proved. Numerical results are presented to show that the proposed algorithm exhibits significant improved performance in terms of multilinear rank learning and consequently tensor signal recovery accuracy, compared to existing trace norm based Tucker completion methods.

We present $\textit{Learn2Aggregate}$, a machine learning (ML) framework for optimizing the generation of Chv\'atal-Gomory (CG) cuts in mixed integer linear programming (MILP). The framework trains a graph neural network to classify useful constraints for aggregation in CG cut generation. The ML-driven CG separator selectively focuses on a small set of impactful constraints, improving runtimes without compromising the strength of the generated cuts. Key to our approach is the formulation of a constraint classification task which favours sparse aggregation of constraints, consistent with empirical findings. This, in conjunction with a careful constraint labeling scheme and a hybrid of deep learning and feature engineering, results in enhanced CG cut generation across five diverse MILP benchmarks. On the largest test sets, our method closes roughly $\textit{twice}$ as much of the integrality gap as the standard CG method while running 40$% faster. This performance improvement is due to our method eliminating 75% of the constraints prior to aggregation.

Gradient descent (GD) and stochastic gradient descent (SGD) have been widely used in a large number of application domains. Therefore, understanding the dynamics of GD and improving its convergence speed is still of great importance. This paper carefully analyzes the dynamics of GD based on the terminal attractor at different stages of its gradient flow. On the basis of the terminal sliding mode theory and the terminal attractor theory, four adaptive learning rates are designed. Their performances are investigated in light of a detailed theoretical investigation, and the running times of the learning procedures are evaluated and compared. The total times of their learning processes are also studied in detail. To evaluate their effectiveness, various simulation results are investigated on a function approximation problem and an image classification problem.

Over the past decade, there has been a remarkable surge in utilizing quadrotors for various purposes due to their simple structure and aggressive maneuverability, such as search and rescue, delivery and autonomous drone racing, etc. One of the key challenges preventing quadrotors from being widely used in these scenarios is online waypoint-constrained time-optimal trajectory generation and control technique. This letter proposes an imitation learning-based online solution to efficiently navigate the quadrotor through multiple waypoints with time-optimal performance. The neural networks (WN&CNets) are trained to learn the control law from the dataset generated by the time-consuming CPC algorithm and then deployed to generate the optimal control commands online to guide the quadrotors. To address the challenge of limited training data and the hover maneuver at the final waypoint, we propose a transition phase strategy that utilizes MINCO trajectories to help the quadrotor 'jump over' the stop-and-go maneuver when switching waypoints. Our method is demonstrated in both simulation and real-world experiments, achieving a maximum speed of 5.6m/s while navigating through 7 waypoints in a confined space of 5.5m*5.5m*2.0m. The results show that with a slight loss in optimality, the WN&CNets significantly reduce the processing time and enable online optimal control for multiple-waypoint constrained flight tasks.

Multiobjective optimization problems (MOPs) are prevalent in machine learning, with applications in multi-task learning, learning under fairness or robustness constraints, etc. Instead of reducing multiple objective functions into a scalar objective, MOPs aim to optimize for the so-called Pareto optimality or Pareto set learning, which involves optimizing more than one objective function simultaneously, over models with millions of parameters. Existing benchmark libraries for MOPs mainly focus on evolutionary algorithms, most of which are zeroth-order methods that do not effectively utilize higher-order information from objectives and cannot scale to large-scale models with millions of parameters. In light of the above gap, this paper introduces LibMOON, the first multiobjective optimization library that supports state-of-the-art gradient-based methods, provides a fair benchmark, and is open-sourced for the community.

Autonomous systems have witnessed a rapid increase in their capabilities, but it remains a challenge for them to perform tasks both effectively and safely. The fact that performance and safety can sometimes be competing objectives renders the cooptimization between them difficult. One school of thought is to treat this cooptimization as a constrained optimal control problem with a performance-oriented objective function and safety as a constraint. However, solving this constrained optimal control problem for general nonlinear systems remains challenging. In this work, we use the general framework of constrained optimal control, but given the safety state constraint, we convert it into an equivalent control constraint, resulting in a state and time-dependent control-constrained optimal control problem. This equivalent optimal control problem can readily be solved using the dynamic programming principle. We show the corresponding value function is a viscosity solution of a certain Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman Partial Differential Equation (HJB-PDE). Furthermore, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our method with a two-dimensional case study, and the experiment shows that the controller synthesized using our method consistently outperforms the baselines, both in safety and performance.