24–28 Aug 2026
Kirchhoff Institute for Physics (KIP)
Europe/Berlin timezone

Geometry of hidden feature spaces in Quantum Neural Networks

26 Aug 2026, 17:20
8m
1.404

1.404

Explainability & Theory 🔀 Explainability & Theory

Speaker

Vishal Ngairangbam (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)

Description

Classical neural networks have rich feature learning capabilities where each functional composition has the ability to transform the hidden representations into non-isometric geometries. In quantum neural networks, however, depth or state reachability alone does not guarantee this feature-learning capability. We study this question in the pure-state setting by viewing encoded data as embedded in the manifold of pure states and analysing infinitesimal unitary actions through Lie-algebra directions. We introduce Classical-to-Lie-algebra (CLA) maps and the criterion of almost Complete Local Selectivity (aCLS), which combines directional completeness with data-dependent local selectivity. Within this framework, we show that data-independent trainable unitaries are complete but non-selective, i.e. learnable rigid reorientations, whereas pure data encodings are selective but non-tunable, i.e. fixed deformations. Hence, geometric flexibility requires a non-trivial joint dependence on data and trainable weights. We further show that accessing high-dimensional deformations of many-qubit state manifolds requires parametrised entangling directions; fixed entanglers such as CNOT alone do not provide adaptive geometric control. Numerical examples validate that aCLS-satisfying data re-uploading models outperform non-tunable schemes while requiring only a quarter of the gate operations.

Authors

Vishal Ngairangbam (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) Michael Spannowsky (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT))

Presentation materials