Establishing Baselines for Photonic Quantum Machine Learning: Insights from an Open, Collaborative Initiative
Authors
Cassandre Notton
Vassilis Apostolou
Agathe Senellart
Anthony Walsh
Daphne Wang
Yichen Xie
Songqinghao Yang
Ilyass Mejdoub
Oussama Zouhry
Kuan-Cheng Chen
Chen-Yu Liu
Ankit Sharma
Edara Yaswanth Balaji
Soham Prithviraj Pawar
Ludovic Le Frioux
Valentin Macheret
Antoine Radet
Valentin Deumier
Ashesh Kumar Gupta
Gabriele Intoccia
Dimitri Jordan Kenne
Chiara Marullo
Giovanni Massafra
Nicolas Reinaldet
Vincenzo Schiano Di Cola
Danylo Kolesnyk
Yelyzaveta Vodovozova
Rawad Mezher
Pierre-Emmanuel Emeriau
Alexia Salavrakos
Jean Senellart
Abstract
The Perceval Challenge is an open, reproducible benchmark designed to assess the potential of photonic quantum computing for machine learning. Focusing on a reduced and hardware-feasible version of the MNIST digit classification task or near-term photonic processors, it offers a concrete framework to evaluate how photonic quantum circuits learn and generalize from limited data. Conducted over more than three months, the challenge attracted 64 teams worldwide in its first phase. After an initial selection, 11 finalist teams were granted access to GPU resources for large-scale simulation and photonic hardware execution through cloud service. The results establish the first unified baseline of photonic machine-learning performance, revealing complementary strengths between variational, hardware-native, and hybrid approaches. This challenge also underscores the importance of open, reproducible experimentation and interdisciplinary collaboration, highlighting how shared benchmarks can accelerate progress in quantum-enhanced learning. All implementations are publicly available in a single shared repository (https://github.com/Quandela/HybridAIQuantum-Challenge), supporting transparent benchmarking and cumulative research. Beyond this specific task, the Perceval Challenge illustrates how systematic, collaborative experimentation can map the current landscape of photonic quantum machine learning and pave the way toward hybrid, quantum-augmented AI workflows.
