Stochastic Schr\"odinger Diffusion Models for Pure-State Ensemble Generation

arXiv stat.ML / 5/6/2026

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Key Points

  • The paper addresses a key challenge in quantum machine learning generative modeling: sampling new quantum pure states from an underlying pure-state ensemble rather than regenerating them from perturbed classical inputs.
  • It proposes Stochastic Schrödinger Diffusion Models (SSDMs), an intrinsic score-based diffusion framework defined directly on the complex projective space \(\mathbb{CP}^{d-1}\) using the Fubini–Study metric.
  • SSDMs implement forward diffusion via a stochastic Schrödinger equation and derive reverse-time sampling dynamics driven by the manifold (Riemannian) score \(
  • abla_{\mathrm{FS}} \log p_t\).
  • To avoid the intractable transition densities required by standard diffusion training, the method uses a local-time training objective with a local Euclidean Ornstein–Uhlenbeck approximation in Fubini–Study normal coordinates.
  • Experiments indicate SSDMs can reproduce target pure-state ensemble statistics (e.g., observable moments and overlap-kernel MMD) and improve downstream QML generalization through representation-level data augmentation.

Abstract

In quantum machine learning (QML), classical data are often encoded as quantum pure states and processed directly as quantum representations, motivating representation-level generative modeling that samples new quantum states from an underlying pure-state ensemble rather than re-preparing them from perturbed classical inputs. However, extending \emph{score-based} diffusion models with well-defined reverse-time samplers to quantum pure-state ensembles remains challenging, due to the non-Euclidean geometry of the complex projective space \mathbb{CP}^{d-1} and the intractability of transition densities. We propose \emph{Stochastic Schr\"odinger Diffusion Models} (SSDMs), an intrinsic score-based generative framework on \mathbb{CP}^{d-1} endowed with the Fubini--Study (FS) metric. SSDMs formulate a forward Riemannian diffusion with a stochastic Schr\"odinger equation (SSE) realization, and derive reverse-time dynamics driven by the Riemannian score abla_{\mathrm{FS}} \log p_t. To enable training without analytic transition densities, we introduce a local-time objective based on a local Euclidean Ornstein--Uhlenbeck approximation in FS normal coordinates, yielding an analytic teacher score mapped back to the manifold. Experiments show that SSDMs faithfully capture target pure-state ensemble statistics, including observable moments, overlap-kernel MMD, and entanglement measures, and that SSDM-generated quantum representations improve downstream QML generalization via representation-level data augmentation.