Hybrid Quantum-Classical Generative Adversarial Networks with Transfer Learning

Abstract: Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have demonstrated immense potential in synthesizing diverse and high-fidelity images. However, critical questions remain unanswered regarding how quantum principles might best enhance their representational and computational capacity. In this paper, we investigate hybrid quantum-classical GAN architectures supplemented by transfer learning to systematically examine whether incorporating Variational Quantum Circuits (VQCs) into the generator, the discriminator, or both improves performance over a fully classical baseline. Our findings indicate that fully hybrid models, which incorporate VQCs in both the generator and the discriminator, consistently produce images of higher visual quality and achieve more favorable quantitative metrics compared to their fully classical counterparts. In particular, VQCs in the generator accelerate early feature learning, whereas those in the discriminator, despite exhibiting slower initial convergence, ultimately facilitate more refined synthetic outputs. Moreover, the model sustains near-comparable performance even when the dataset size is drastically reduced, suggesting that transfer learning and quantum enhancements mitigate the problem of data scarcity. Overall, the results underscore that carefully integrating quantum computing with classical adversarial training and pretrained feature extraction can considerably enrich GAN-based image synthesis. These insights open avenues for future work on higher-resolution tasks, alternative quantum circuit designs, and experimentation with emerging quantum hardware.