English

PAC global optimization for VQE in low-curvature geometric regimes

Quantum Physics 2025-11-19 v1

Abstract

We give noise-robust, Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) guarantees of global ε\varepsilon-optimality for the Variational Quantum Eigensolver under explicit geometric conditions. For periodic ansatzes with bounded generators -- yielding a globally Lipschitz cost landscape on a toroidal parameter space -- we assume that the low-energy region containing the global minimum is a Morse--Bott submanifold whose normal Hessian has rank r=O(logp)r = O(\log p) for pp parameters, and which satisfies polynomial fiber regularity with respect to coordinate-aligned, embedded flats. This low-curvature-dimensional structure serves as a model for regimes in which only a small number of directions control energy variation, and is consistent with mechanisms such as strong parameter tying together with locality in specific multiscale and tied shallow architectures. Under this assumption, the sample complexity required to find an ε\varepsilon-optimal region with confidence 1δ1-\delta scales with the curvature dimension rr rather than the ambient dimension pp. With probability at least 1δ1-\delta, the algorithm outputs a region in which all points are ε\varepsilon-optimal, and at least one lies within a bounded neighborhood of the global minimum. The resulting complexity is quasi-polynomial in pp and ε1\varepsilon^{-1} and logarithmic in δ1\delta^{-1}. This identifies a geometric regime in which high-probability global optimization remains feasible despite shot noise.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.14628,
  title  = {PAC global optimization for VQE in low-curvature geometric regimes},
  author = {Benjamin Asch},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.14628},
  year   = {2025}
}