Weighted Quantum Signal Processing: Low-Depth Polynomial Approximation with Applications to Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks

Rohit Sarma Sarkar, Rupayan Bhattacharjee, Elias F. Combarro, Michele Grossi, Lirandë Pira +3

Quantum Signal Processing is a powerful quantum framework for generating and approximating univariate polynomials. However, QSP is often limited by circuit-depth bottlenecks and parity constraints on the class of realizable polynomials. In this work, we introduce Weighted Quantum Signal Processing, an extension of QSP in which a weight function is assigned to the central rotation operator. This formulation provides a deeper understanding of QSP, which emerges as the special case of WQSP with unit weights. The choice of weights determines the structure and expressive capabilities of WQSP circuits. When the weights are natural numbers greater than one, WQSP reduces to a pruned version of QSP, revealing parameter redundancies in the standard framework. Through appropriate selection of integer weights, WQSP achieves linear-to-exponential reductions in the number of parameters required to realize arbitrary bounded univariate polynomials while preserving approximation quality. For generic weights, we establish corresponding approximation error bounds and show that, in many cases, the approximation is exact. We analyze WQSP from both a deterministic perspective, where polynomial…