How to map an array of values for y_true to a single value in order to compare to y_pred in a Tensorflow loss function (Tensorflow/Tensorflow Quantum) - tensorflow

Question

I am trying to implement the circuits listed on page 8 in the following paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.10876.pdf using Tensorflow Quantum (TFQ). I have done so previously for a subset of circuits using Qiskit, and ended up with accuracies that can be found on page 14 in the following paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.09887.pdf. In TFQ, my accuracies are way down. I think this delta originates because in TFQ, I only used 1 observable Pauli Z operator on the first qubit, and the circuits do not seem to "transfer all knowledge" to the first qubit. I place this in quotes, because I am sure there is a better way to describe this. In Qiskit on the other hand, 16 states (4^2) get mapped to 2 states.
My question: how can I get my accuracies back up?
Potential answer a): some method of "transferring all information" to a single qubit, potentially an ancilla qubit, and doing a readout on this qubit.
Potential answer b) placing a Pauli Z observable on all qubits (4 in total), mapping half of the 16 states to a label 0 and the other half to a label 1. I attempted this in the code below.
My attempt at answer b):
I have a Tensorflow Quantum (TFQ) circuit implemented in Tensorflow. The circuit has multiple observables, which I try to bring together in my loss function. I prefer to use as many standard components as possible, but need to map my quantum states to a label in order to determine the loss. I think what I am trying to achieve is not unique to TFQ. I define my model in the following way:
def circuit():
data_qubits = cirq.GridQubit.rect(4, 1)
circuit = cirq.Circuit()
...
return circuit, [cirq.Z(data_qubits[0]), cirq.Z(data_qubits[1]), cirq.Z(data_qubits[2]), cirq.Z(data_qubits[3])]
model_circuit, model_readout = circuit()
model = tf.keras.Sequential([
tf.keras.layers.Input(shape=(), dtype=tf.string),
# The PQC layer returns the expected value of the readout gate, range [-1,1].
tfq.layers.PQC(model_circuit, model_readout),
])
# compile model
model.compile(
loss = loss_mse,
optimizer=tf.keras.optimizers.Adam(learning_rate=0.01),
metrics=[])
in loss_mse (Mean Square Error), I receive a (32, 4) tensor for y_pred. One row could look like
[-0.2, 0.33, 0.6, 0.3]
This would have to be first mapped from [-1,1] to a binarized version of [0,1], so that it looks like:
[0, 1, 1, 1]
Now, a table lookup needs to happen, which tells if this combination is 0 or 1. Finally, the regular (y_true-y_pred)^2 can be performed by that row, followed by a np.sum on all rows. I tried to implement this:
def get_label(measurement):
if measurement == [0,0,0,0]: return 0
...
elif measurement == [1,1,1,1]: return 0
else: return -1
def py_call(y_true, y_pred):
# cast tensor to numpy
y_pred_np = np.asarray(y_pred)
loss = np.zeros((len(y_pred))) # could be a single variable with += within the loop
# evalaute all 32 samples
for pred in range(len(y_pred_np)):
# map, binarize and lookup
y_labelled = get_label([0 if y<0 else 1 for y in y_pred_np[pred]])
# regular loss comparison
loss[pred] = (y_labelled - y_true[pred])**2
# reduce
loss = np.sum(loss)/len(y_true)
return loss
#tf.function
def loss_mse(y_true, y_pred):
external_list = []
loss = tf.py_function(py_call, inp=[y_true, y_pred], Tout=[tf.float64])
return loss
However, the system appears to still expect a (32,4) tensor. I would have thought I could simply provide a single loss values (float). My question: how can I map multiple values for y_true to a single number in order to compare with a single y_pred value in a tensorflow loss function?

Answer 1

So it looks like there are a couple of things going on here. To answer your question
how can I map multiple values for y_true to a single number in order to compare with a single y_pred value in a tensorflow loss function ?
What you might want is some kind of tf.reduce_* function like tf.reduce_mean or tf.reduce_sum. This function will allow you to apply this reduction operation accross a given tensor axis allowing you to convert a tensor of shape (32, 4) to a tensor of shape (32,) or a tensor of shape (4,). Here is a quick snippet:
#tf.function
def my_loss(y_true, y_pred):
# y_true is shape (32, 4)
# y_pred is shape (32, 4)
# Scale from [-1, 1] to [0, 1]
y_true += 1
y_true /= 2
y_pred += 1
y_pred /= 2
# These are now both (32,) with the reduction of taking the mean applied along
# the second axis.
reduced_true = tf.reduce_mean(y_true, axis=1)
reduced_pred = tf.reduce_mean(y_pred, axis=1)
# Now a scalar loss.
loss = tf.reduce_mean((reduce_true - reduced_pred) ** 2)
return loss
Now the above isn't exactly what you want, since it's not super clear to me at least what exact reduction rules you have in mind for taking something like [0,1,1,1] -> 0 vs [0,0,0,0] -> 1.
Another thing I will also mention is that if you want JUST the sum of these Pauli Operators in cirq that you have term by term in the list [cirq.Z(data_qubits[0]), cirq.Z(data_qubits[1]), cirq.Z(data_qubits[2]), cirq.Z(data_qubits[3])] and all you care about is the final sum of these expectations, you could just as easily do:
my_operator = sum([cirq.Z(data_qubits[0]), cirq.Z(data_qubits[1]),
cirq.Z(data_qubits[2]), cirq.Z(data_qubits[3])])
print(my_op)
Which should give something like:
cirq.PauliSum(cirq.LinearDict({frozenset({(cirq.GridQubit(0, 0), cirq.Z)}): (1+0j), frozenset({(cirq.GridQubit(0, 1), cirq.Z)}): (1+0j), frozenset({(cirq.GridQubit(0, 2), cirq.Z)}): (1+0j), frozenset({(cirq.GridQubit(0, 3), cirq.Z)}): (1+0j)}))
Which is also compatable as a readout operation in the PQC layer. Lastly if would recommend reading through some of the snippets and examples here:
https://www.tensorflow.org/quantum/api_docs/python/tfq/layers/PQC
and here:
https://www.tensorflow.org/quantum/api_docs/python/tfq/layers/Expectation
Which give a pretty good description of how the input and output signatures of the functions look as well as the shapes you can expect from them.