Learning with the Quantum Earth Mover's distance

PennyLane Help
1

Hello everyone,

I am trying to optimize a circuit to learn the GHZ state via the Quantum Earth Mover’s distance as defined in [2101.03037] Learning quantum data with the quantum Earth Mover's distance
(See section 2 for the presentation of the toy model and Appendix F for computational details).

However, I get the No gradients provided for any variable: (['Variable:0'],) error when trying to optimize the circuit.

I suppose this might have something to do with the fact that the circuit is called when computing the distance, but I’m not sure.

Here’s the notebook for the code: quantum.py (3.5 KB)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Here is the code for the circuit:

@qml.qnode(dev, interface="tf", diff_method="backprop" )
def toy(op, params, H):
    qml.RX(params[0], wires = 0)
    qml.broadcast(qml.CRX, wires = range(n), pattern = "chain", parameters = params[1:n])
    if op == 'state':
        return qml.state()
   else: 
        return qml.expval(H)

and here is the code for the GHZ state:

@qml.qnode(dev, interface="tf", diff_method="backprop" )

def GHZ(op,H):
    qml.Hadamard(wires=0)
    qml.broadcast(qml.CNOT, wires = range(n), pattern = "chain")
    if op == 'state':
        return qml.state()
    else: 
        return qml.expval(H)

Here is the code for the QEM distance:

def exp(params, H):
    a = toy('exp',params,H)
    b = GHZ('exp',H)
    diff = tf.abs(a - b) 
    return diff

def tensor_prod(k):
    if k == 0:
        prod = qml.PauliY(0)
        else:
            prod = qml.PauliX(0)
        for i in range(1,k):
            prod = prod @ qml.PauliX(i)
        if k % 2 == 0:
            prod = prod @ qml.PauliY(k)
        else:
            prod = prod @ qml.PauliX(k)
    return prod

def dem(params):
    expz = np.zeros(n)
    values = np.zeros(n+1)
    for i in range(n):
        expz[i] = exp(params,qml.PauliZ(i))
    expz = tf.cast(expz, tf.float32)
    values[0] = tf.math.reduce_sum(expz)
    for i in range(1,n):
        values[i] = exp(params,tensor_prod(i))
    dist = tf.keras.backend.max(values)
    dist = tf.cast(dist, tf.float32)
    return dist

And here is the code for the training:

x = tf.Variable(np.random.uniform(0,2*np.pi,n))

opt_dem = tf.keras.optimizers.Adam(learning_rate=0.2)
step = 30
for i in range(step):
    with tf.GradientTape() as tape:
        loss = dem(x)
    vars = [x]
    gradients = tape.gradient(loss, vars)
    opt_dem.apply_gradients(zip(gradients, vars))
2

Hi @grove0100! This error message (No gradients provided) is normally indicative of something happening in the cost function that breaks TensorFlow’s ability to track the gradients.

In this case, it appears that your cost function is evaluating the QNodes, but then inserting them into a NumPy array — this will cause them to be converted from tf.Tensor to np.ndarray objects, and as a result, TensorFlow will lose track of the gradients!

The following modification — using lists to store the QNode tensor outputs to avoid casting to a NumPy array — fixes it for me:

def dem(params):
    # expz is a list
    expz = []

    for i in range(n):
        # append each TF tensor to the list
        expz.append(exp(params, qml.PauliZ(i)))

    # values is a list
    values = [tf.math.reduce_sum(expz)]

    for i in range(1, n):
        # append each TF tensor to the list
        values.append(exp(params, tensor_prod(i)))

    # here we stack the list (going from List[Tensor] -> Tensor),
    # and then take the maximum
    dist = tf.math.reduce_max(tf.stack(values))
    return dist


x = tf.Variable(np.random.uniform(0, 2 * np.pi, n), dtype=tf.float64)

opt_dem = tf.keras.optimizers.Adam(learning_rate=0.2)
step = 30

for i in range(step):
    with tf.GradientTape() as tape:
        loss = dem(x)

    vars = [x]
    gradients = tape.gradient(loss, vars)
    opt_dem.apply_gradients(zip(gradients, vars))
3

This looks very promising, will try it out later, thank you!