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Poster

Quantum Speedups of Optimizing Approximately Convex Functions with Applications to Logarithmic Regret Stochastic Convex Bandits

Tongyang Li · Ruizhe Zhang

Hall J (level 1) #819

Keywords: [ Quantum computing ] [ Approximately convex functions ] [ stochastic convex bandits ] [ logarithmic regret ]


Abstract: We initiate the study of quantum algorithms for optimizing approximately convex functions. Given a convex set KRn and a function F:RnR such that there exists a convex function f:KR satisfying supxK|F(x)f(x)|ϵ/n, our quantum algorithm finds an xK such that F(x)minxKF(x)ϵ using ˜O(n3) quantum evaluation queries to F. This achieves a polynomial quantum speedup compared to the best-known classical algorithms. As an application, we give a quantum algorithm for zeroth-order stochastic convex bandits with ˜O(n5log2T) regret, an exponential speedup in T compared to the classical Ω(T) lower bound. Technically, we achieve quantum speedup in n by exploiting a quantum framework of simulated annealing and adopting a quantum version of the hit-and-run walk. Our speedup in T for zeroth-order stochastic convex bandits is due to a quadratic quantum speedup in multiplicative error of mean estimation.

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