Quantum generative classification with mixed states

Classification can be performed using either a discriminative or a generative learning approach. Discriminative learning consists of constructing the conditional probability of the outputs given the inputs, while generative learning consists of constructing the joint probability density of the inputs and outputs. Although most classical and quantum methods are discriminative, there are some advantages of the generative learning approach. For instance, it can be applied to unsupervised learning, statistical inference, uncertainty estimation, and synthetic data generation. In this article, we present a quantum generative multiclass classification strategy, called quantum generative classification (QGC). This model uses a variational quantum algorithm to estimate the joint probability density function of features and labels of a data set by means of a mixed quantum state. We also introduce a quantum map called quantum-enhanced Fourier features, which leverages quantum superposition to prepare high-dimensional data samples in quantum hardware using a small number of qubits. We show that the QGC algorithm can be viewed as a Gaussian mixture that reproduces a kernel Hilbert space of the training data. In addition, we developed a hybrid quantum–classical neural network that shows that it is possible to perform generative classification on high-dimensional data sets. The method was tested on various low- and high-dimensional data sets including the 10-class MNIST and Fashion-MNIST data sets, illustrating that the generative classification strategy is competitive against other previous quantum models.