Quantum optical neural networks

Abstract Physically motivated quantum algorithms for specific near-term quantum hardware will likely be the next frontier in quantum information science. Here, we show how many of the features of neural networks for machine learning can naturally be mapped into the quantum optical domain by introducing the quantum optical neural network (QONN). Through numerical simulation and analysis we train the QONN to perform a range of quantum information processing tasks, including newly developed protocols for quantum optical state compression, reinforcement learning, black-box quantum simulation, and one-way quantum repeaters. We consistently demonstrate that our system can generalize from only a small set of training data onto inputs for which it has not been trained. Our results indicate that QONNs are a powerful design tool for quantum optical systems and, leveraging advances in integrated quantum photonics, a promising architecture for next-generation quantum processors.