qml.gradients.param_shift_hessian

param_shift_hessian(tape, argnum=None, diagonal_shifts=None, off_diagonal_shifts=None, f0=None)

Transform a circuit to compute the parameter-shift Hessian with respect to its trainable parameters. This is the Hessian transform to replace the old one in the new return types system

Use this transform to explicitly generate and explore parameter-shift circuits for computing the Hessian of QNodes directly, without computing first derivatives.

For second-order derivatives of more complicated cost functions, please consider using your chosen autodifferentiation framework directly, by chaining gradient computations:

>>> qml.jacobian(qml.grad(cost))(weights)

Parameters

• tape (QNode or QuantumTape) – quantum circuit to differentiate

• argnum (int or list[int] or array_like[bool] or None) – Parameter indices to differentiate with respect to. If not provided, the Hessian with respect to all trainable indices is returned. Note that the indices refer to tape parameters both if tape is a tape, and if it is a QNode. If an array_like is provided, it is expected to be a symmetric two-dimensional Boolean mask with shape (n, n) where n is the number of trainable tape parameters.

• diagonal_shifts (list[tuple[int or float]]) – List containing tuples of shift values for the Hessian diagonal. The shifts are understood as first-order derivative shifts and are iterated to obtain the second-order derivative. If provided, one tuple of shifts should be given per trainable parameter and the tuple length should match the number of frequencies for that parameter. If unspecified, equidistant shifts are used.

• off_diagonal_shifts (list[tuple[int or float]]) – List containing tuples of shift values for the off-diagonal entries of the Hessian. If provided, one tuple of shifts should be given per trainable parameter and the tuple should match the number of frequencies for that parameter. The combination of shifts into bivariate shifts is performed automatically. If unspecified, equidistant shifts are used.

• f0 (tensor_like[float] or None) – Output of the evaluated input tape. If provided, and the Hessian tapes include the original input tape, the ‘f0’ value is used instead of evaluating the input tape, reducing the number of device invocations.

Returns

The transformed circuit as described in qml.transform. Executing this circuit will provide the Hessian in the form of a tensor, a tuple, or a nested tuple depending upon the number of trainable QNode arguments, the output shape(s) of the input QNode itself, and the usage of shot vectors in the QNode execution.

Note: By default a QNode with the keyword hybrid=True computes derivatives with respect to QNode arguments, which can include classical computations on those arguments before they are passed to quantum operations. The “purely quantum” Hessian can instead be obtained with hybrid=False, which is then computed with respect to the gate arguments and produces a result of shape (*QNode output dimensions, # gate arguments, # gate arguments).

Return type

qnode (QNode) or tuple[List[QuantumTape], function]

Example

Applying the Hessian transform to a QNode computes its Hessian tensor. This works best if no classical processing is applied within the QNode to operation parameters.

>>> dev = qml.device("default.qubit")
>>> @qml.qnode(dev)
... def circuit(x):
...     qml.RX(x[0], wires=0)
...     qml.CRY(x[1], wires=[0, 1])
...     return qml.expval(qml.Z(0) @ qml.Z(1))

>>> x = np.array([0.5, 0.2], requires_grad=True)
>>> qml.gradients.param_shift_hessian(circuit)(x)
((array(-0.86883595), array(0.04762358)),
 (array(0.04762358), array(0.05998862)))

Usage Details

The Hessian transform can also be applied to a quantum tape instead of a QNode, producing the parameter-shifted tapes and a post-processing function to combine the execution results of these tapes into the Hessian:

>>> circuit(x)  # generate the QuantumTape inside the QNode
>>> tape = circuit.qtape
>>> hessian_tapes, postproc_fn = qml.gradients.param_shift_hessian(tape)
>>> len(hessian_tapes)
13
>>> all(isinstance(tape, qml.tape.QuantumTape) for tape in hessian_tapes)
True
>>> postproc_fn(qml.execute(hessian_tapes, dev, None))
((array(-0.86883595), array(0.04762358)),
 (array(0.04762358), array(0.05998862)))

The Hessian tapes can be inspected via their draw function, which reveals the different gate arguments generated from parameter-shift rules (we only draw the first four out of all 13 tapes here):

>>> for h_tape in hessian_tapes[0:4]:
...     print(qml.drawer.tape_text(h_tape, decimals=1))
0: ──RX(0.5)─╭●───────┤ ╭<Z@Z>
1: ──────────╰RY(0.2)─┤ ╰<Z@Z>
0: ──RX(-2.6)─╭●───────┤ ╭<Z@Z>
1: ───────────╰RY(0.2)─┤ ╰<Z@Z>
0: ──RX(2.1)─╭●───────┤ ╭<Z@Z>
1: ──────────╰RY(1.8)─┤ ╰<Z@Z>
0: ──RX(2.1)─╭●────────┤ ╭<Z@Z>
1: ──────────╰RY(-1.4)─┤ ╰<Z@Z>

To enable more detailed control over the parameter shifts, shift values can be provided per parameter, and separately for the diagonal and the off-diagonal terms. Here we choose them based on the parameters x themselves, mostly yielding multiples of the original parameters in the shifted tapes.

>>> diag_shifts = [(x[0] / 2,), (x[1] / 2, x[1])]
>>> offdiag_shifts = [(x[0],), (x[1], 2 * x[1])]
>>> hessian_tapes, postproc_fn = qml.gradients.param_shift_hessian(
...     tape, diagonal_shifts=diag_shifts, off_diagonal_shifts=offdiag_shifts
... )
>>> for h_tape in hessian_tapes[0:4]:
...     print(qml.drawer.tape_text(h_tape, decimals=1))
0: ──RX(0.5)─╭●───────┤ ╭<Z@Z>
1: ──────────╰RY(0.2)─┤ ╰<Z@Z>
0: ──RX(0.0)─╭●───────┤ ╭<Z@Z>
1: ──────────╰RY(0.2)─┤ ╰<Z@Z>
0: ──RX(1.0)─╭●───────┤ ╭<Z@Z>
1: ──────────╰RY(0.2)─┤ ╰<Z@Z>
0: ──RX(1.0)─╭●───────┤ ╭<Z@Z>
1: ──────────╰RY(0.4)─┤ ╰<Z@Z>

Note

Note that the diagonal_shifts are interpreted as first-order derivative shift values. That means they are used to generate a first-order derivative recipe, which then is iterated in order to obtain the second-order derivative for the diagonal Hessian entry. Explicit control over the used second-order shifts is not implemented.

Finally, the argnum argument can be used to compute the Hessian only for some of the variational parameters. Note that this indexing refers to trainable tape parameters both if tape is a QNode and if it is a QuantumTape.

>>> hessian_tapes, postproc_fn = qml.gradients.param_shift_hessian(tape, argnum=(1,))
>>> postproc_fn(qml.execute(hessian_tapes, dev, None))
((tensor(0., requires_grad=True), tensor(0., requires_grad=True)),
 (tensor(0., requires_grad=True), array(0.05998862)))

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