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 logarithmic regret stochastic convex bandit


Quantum Speedups of Optimizing Approximately Convex Functions with Applications to Logarithmic Regret Stochastic Convex Bandits

Neural Information Processing Systems

We initiate the study of quantum algorithms for optimizing approximately convex functions. This achieves a polynomial quantum speedup compared to the best-known classical algorithms. As an application, we give a quantum algorithm for zeroth-order stochastic convex bandits with \tilde{O}(n {5}\log {2} T) regret, an exponential speedup in T compared to the classical \Omega(\sqrt{T}) lower bound. Technically, we achieve quantum speedup in n by exploiting a quantum framework of simulated annealing and adopting a quantum version of the hit-and-run walk. Our speedup in T for zeroth-order stochastic convex bandits is due to a quadratic quantum speedup in multiplicative error of mean estimation.