Although quantum Bayesian networks provide a promising paradigm for multi-agent decision-making,their practical application faces two challenges in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum(NISQ)era.Limited qubit resources...Although quantum Bayesian networks provide a promising paradigm for multi-agent decision-making,their practical application faces two challenges in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum(NISQ)era.Limited qubit resources restrict direct application to large-scale inference tasks.Additionally,no quantum methods are currently available for multi-agent collaborative decision-making.To address these,we propose a hybrid quantum–classical multi-agent decision-making framework based on hierarchical Bayesian networks,comprising two novel methods.The first one is a hybrid quantum–classical inference method based on hierarchical Bayesian networks.It decomposes large-scale hierarchical Bayesian networks into modular subnetworks.The inference for each subnetwork can be performed on NISQ devices,and the intermediate results are converted into classical messages for cross-layer transmission.The second one is a multi-agent decision-making method using the variational quantum eigensolver(VQE)in the influence diagram.This method models the collaborative decision-making with the influence diagram and encodes the expected utility of diverse actions into a Hamiltonian and subsequently determines the intra-group optimal action efficiently.Experimental validation on the IonQ quantum simulator demonstrates that the hierarchical method outperforms the non-hierarchical method at the functional inference level,and the VQE method can obtain the optimal strategy exactly at the collaborative decision-making level.Our research not only extends the application of quantum computing to multi-agent decision-making but also provides a practical solution for the NISQ era.展开更多
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.62473371 and 61673389)。
文摘Although quantum Bayesian networks provide a promising paradigm for multi-agent decision-making,their practical application faces two challenges in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum(NISQ)era.Limited qubit resources restrict direct application to large-scale inference tasks.Additionally,no quantum methods are currently available for multi-agent collaborative decision-making.To address these,we propose a hybrid quantum–classical multi-agent decision-making framework based on hierarchical Bayesian networks,comprising two novel methods.The first one is a hybrid quantum–classical inference method based on hierarchical Bayesian networks.It decomposes large-scale hierarchical Bayesian networks into modular subnetworks.The inference for each subnetwork can be performed on NISQ devices,and the intermediate results are converted into classical messages for cross-layer transmission.The second one is a multi-agent decision-making method using the variational quantum eigensolver(VQE)in the influence diagram.This method models the collaborative decision-making with the influence diagram and encodes the expected utility of diverse actions into a Hamiltonian and subsequently determines the intra-group optimal action efficiently.Experimental validation on the IonQ quantum simulator demonstrates that the hierarchical method outperforms the non-hierarchical method at the functional inference level,and the VQE method can obtain the optimal strategy exactly at the collaborative decision-making level.Our research not only extends the application of quantum computing to multi-agent decision-making but also provides a practical solution for the NISQ era.
