Optimizer-Dependent Generalization Bound for Quantum Neural Networks

Abstract: Quantum neural networks (QNNs) play a pivotal role in addressing complex tasks within quantum machine learning, analogous to classical neural networks in deep learning. Ensuring consistent performance across diverse datasets is crucial for understanding and optimizing QNNs in both classical and quantum machine learning tasks, but remains a challenge as QNN's generalization properties have not been fully explored. In this paper, we investigate the generalization properties of QNNs through the lens of learning algorithm stability, circumventing the need to explore the entire hypothesis space and providing insights into how classical optimizers influence QNN performance. By establishing a connection between QNNs and quantum combs, we examine the general behaviors of QNN models from a quantum information theory perspective. Leveraging the uniform stability of the stochastic gradient descent algorithm, we propose a generalization error bound determined by the number of trainable parameters, data uploading times, dataset dimension, and classical optimizer hyperparameters. Numerical experiments validate this comprehensive understanding of QNNs and align with our theoretical conclusions. As the first exploration into understanding the generalization capability of QNNs from a unified perspective of design and training, our work offers practical insights for applying QNNs in quantum machine learning.