Reinforcement Learning for Semi-Autonomous Approximate Quantum Eigensolver

The characterization of an operator by its eigenvectors and eigenvalues allows us to know its action over any quantum state. Here, we propose a protocol to obtain an approximation of the eigenvectors of an arbitrary Hermitian quantum operator. This protocol is based on measurement and feedback processes, which characterize a reinforcement learning protocol. Our proposal is composed of two systems, a black box named environment and a quantum state named agent. The role of the environment is to change any quantumstate by a unitarymatrix UE= e-toEwhere OEis a Hermitian operator, and t is a real parameter. The agent is a quantum state which adapts to some eigenvector of OEby repeated interactions with the environment, feedback process, and semi-random rotations. With this proposal, we can obtain an approximation of the eigenvectors of a random qubit operator with average fidelity over 90% in less than 10 iterations, and surpass 98% in less than 300 iterations. Moreover, for the two-qubit cases, the four eigenvectors are obtained with fidelities above 89% in 8000 iterations for a random operator, and fidelities of 99% for an operator with the Bell states as eigenvectors. This protocol can be useful to implement semi-autonomous quantum devices which should be capable of extracting information and deciding with minimal resources and without human intervention. © 2020 The Author(s).