Universal Quantum Transformer

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence [Submitted on 29 Apr 2026] Universal Quantum Transformer Sungyong Chung, Alireza Talebpour Classical continuous-space neural networks fundamentally struggle to lock into exact mathematical symmetries, such as modular arithmetic and non-commutative algebra. To approximate these discrete logical rules, they often rely on massive parameter scaling, resulting in stochastic instability even after delayed generalization phenomena known as grokking. Here, we introduce the Universal Quantum Transformer (UQT), a fundamentally novel, quantum-native computing architecture that uses the physical properties of multi-qubit systems as a universal inductive bias for exact mathematical and algebraic reasoning. Rather than translating classical neural mechanisms, our framework relies entirely on parameterized geometric phase embedding and SU(2) wave-interference. We demonstrate that the quantum attention circuit, operating on a highly compact 5-qubit substrate, perfectly learns two highly distinct formal classes: cyclic modular arithmetic (\mathbb{Z}_{11}) and non-Abelian algebra (the S_4 permutation group). While classical attention-based networks exhibit stochastic instability at convergence, the UQT achieves mathematically exact, deterministic generalization. We refer to this phenomenon as crystallization: a step beyond the well-known phenomenon of grokking. Crucially, this framework yields massive computational and memory advantages by theoretically bypassing the quadratic bottleneck of classical self-attention, and by logarithmically compressing the required representation dimension to eliminate the massive over-parameterization inherent to classical networks. Finally, we deploy this architecture on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) hardware, proving its viability on current IBM Quantum computers. These results establish parameterized quantum topology as a universally superior physical substrate for exact artificial intelligence. Subjects: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Emerging Technologies (cs.ET); Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2606.00045 [cs.AI]   (or arXiv:2606.00045v1 [cs.AI] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.00045 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Alireza Talebpour [view email] [v1] Wed, 29 Apr 2026 20:49:23 UTC (1,544 KB) Access Paper: view license Current browse context: cs.AI < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-06 Change to browse by: cs cs.ET quant-ph References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)