Quantum Gaussian Process Regression for Bayesian Optimization

Abstract: Gaussian process regression is a well-established Bayesian machine learning method. We propose a new approach to Gaussian process regression using quantum kernels based on parameterized quantum circuits. By employing a hardware-efficient feature map and careful regularization of the Gram matrix, we demonstrate that the variance information of the resulting quantum Gaussian process can be preserved. We also show that quantum Gaussian processes can be used as a surrogate model for Bayesian optimization, a task that critically relies on the variance of the surrogate model. To demonstrate the performance of this quantum Bayesian optimization algorithm, we apply it to the hyperparameter optimization of a machine learning model which performs regression on a real-world dataset. We benchmark the quantum Bayesian optimization against its classical counterpart and show that quantum version can match its performance.