For an open quantum reservoir, how the system forgets is part of how it computes. Quantum reservoir computing processes input streams with fixed quantum dynamics and trains only a linear readout. Dissipation can make old inputs fade, but prior studies commonly fix the environmental process and tune only its strength. Here we show numerically that the coupling pattern, meaning whether transitions connect to separate or shared environmental channels, changes which parts of the input history remain accessible. Paired simulations of finite spin reservoirs keep the Hamiltonian, inputs, measurements, and readout fixed. The tested patterns produce distinct task profiles, with no universal winner. Shared relaxation preserves more recent input history than independent local loss, and the retained memory changes when the qubits contribute with different relative phases to the shared decay channel. This ordering recurs across system sizes, Hamiltonians, input protocols, and targeted controls. Environmental coupling is therefore more than a damping parameter: it is a design layer that shapes not only how quickly information fades, but which input history remains available for computation.
M. Baumann, Itamar Fink, Johannes Wittmann et al.· 0 citations
Quantum optimization has shown promising results for quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problems. Real-world applications, however, often involve polynomial coefficients that depend on tunable external factors - such as demand forecasts or risk preferences - giving rise to bilevel optimization structures. We show how variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) can efficiently handle such parametric problems, making three contributions. First, we propose a bilevel optimization model for diagonal cost Hamiltonians where coefficients depend on a tunable outer parameter: an outer loop adjusts this parameter - reshaping the cost landscape - while an inner VQA optimizes circuit variables. Second, since derivative-free probing methods incur a multiplicative overhead when each outer evaluation requires a complete inner solve, we develop correlator-reuse implicit differentiation (CR-ID), which obtains outer gradients by reusing quantum measurements already collected during inner energy estimation, requiring essentially no additional circuit executions. Experiments across three coefficient families show that CR-ID consistently improves budget-normalized efficiency by ~4\% in 1D and over 14\% in multi-dimensional settings, showing a significant performance advantage compared to finite-difference methods. Third, we show that this property is architecture-dependent: VQE admits exact reuse gradients, whereas QAOA introduces a state-dependent term that creates a cost-bias trade-off.
Tobias Rohe, M. Baumann, Federico Harjes Ruiloba et al.· 0 citations
