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In this paper, we propose a general scheme to analyze the gradient vanishing phenomenon, also known as the barren plateau phenomenon, in training quantum neural networks with the ZX-calculus. More precisely, we extend the barren plateaus…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-06-09 Chen Zhao , Xiao-Shan Gao

In the search for quantum advantage with near-term quantum devices, navigating the optimization landscape is significantly hampered by the barren plateaus phenomenon. This study presents a strategy to overcome this obstacle without changing…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-03-11 Yuhan Yao , Yoshihiko Hasegawa

Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) are widely applied in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era and are expected to demonstrate quantum advantage. However, training VQAs faces difficulties, one of which is the so-called barren plateaus…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-02-07 Huan-Yu Liu , Tai-Ping Sun , Yu-Chun Wu , Yong-Jian Han , Guo-Ping Guo

Variational quantum algorithms are expected to demonstrate the advantage of quantum computing on near-term noisy quantum computers. However, training such variational quantum algorithms suffers from gradient vanishing as the size of the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-11-29 Anbang Wu , Gushu Li , Yufei Ding , Yuan Xie

Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs) have received considerable attention due to their potential for achieving near-term quantum advantage. However, more work is needed to understand their scalability. One known scaling result for VQAs is…

Quantifying the flatness of the objective-function landscape associated with unstructured parameterized quantum circuits is important for understanding the performance of variational algorithms utilizing a "hardware-efficient ansatz",…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-03-14 John Napp

Variational Quantum Circuits (VQCs) have emerged as a promising paradigm for quantum machine learning in the NISQ era. While parameter sharing in VQCs can reduce the parameter space dimensionality and potentially mitigate the barren plateau…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-19 Gerhard Stenzel , Tobias Rohe , Michael Kölle , Leo Sünkel , Jonas Stein , Claudia Linnhoff-Popien

Parametrized quantum circuits initialized with random initial parameter values are characterized by barren plateaus where the gradient becomes exponentially small in the number of qubits. In this technical note we theoretically motivate and…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-12-11 Edward Grant , Leonard Wossnig , Mateusz Ostaszewski , Marcello Benedetti

In the paper, a gradient-free optimization algorithm for single-qubit quantum classifier is proposed to overcome the effects of barren plateau caused by quantum devices. A rotation gate RX({\phi}) is applied on a single-qubit binary quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-05-11 Anqi Zhang , Xiaoyun He , Shengmei Zhao

Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) have enabled a wide range of applications on near-term quantum devices. However, their scalability is fundamentally limited by barren plateaus, where the probability of encountering large gradients…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-07-22 Elias Zapusek , Ivan Rojkov , Florentin Reiter

Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs) have emerged as pivotal strategies for attaining quantum advantage in diverse scientific and technological domains, notably within Quantum Neural Networks. However, despite their potential, VQAs…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-04-22 Lucas Friedrich , Tiago de Souza Farias , Jonas Maziero

Combining classical optimization with parameterized quantum circuit evaluation, variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) are among the most promising algorithms in near-term quantum computing. Similar to neural networks (NNs), VQAs iteratively…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-11-18 Zhehao Yi , Yanying Liang , Haozhen Situ

Vanishing gradients can pose substantial obstacles for high-dimensional optimization problems. Here we consider energy minimization problems for quantum many-body systems with extensive Hamiltonians and finite-range interactions, which can…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-03-26 Thomas Barthel , Qiang Miao

Variational quantum computing offers a powerful framework with applications across diverse fields such as quantum chemistry, machine learning, and optimization. However, its scalability is hindered by the exponential concentration of the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-05-05 Giulio Crognaletti , Michele Grossi , Angelo Bassi

Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) are among the most promising algorithms in the era of Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum Devices. Such algorithms are constructed using a parameterization U($\pmb{\theta}$) with a classical optimizer that…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-10-21 Lucas Friedrich , Jonas Maziero

This paper presents an easy-to-implement approach to mitigate the challenges posed by barren plateaus (BPs) in randomly initialized parameterized quantum circuits (PQCs) within variational quantum algorithms (VQAs). Recent state-of-the-art…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-12-10 Muhammad Kashif , Muhammad Shafique

Barren plateaus, which means the training gradients become extremely small, pose a major challenge in optimizing parameterized quantum circuits, often making the learning process impractically slow or stall. This work shows why using neural…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-12-03 Zhehao Yi , Rahul Bhadani

Training quantum neural networks (QNNs) using gradient-based or gradient-free classical optimisation approaches is severely impacted by the presence of barren plateaus in the cost landscapes. In this paper, we devise a framework for…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-06-04 Yidong Liao , Min-Hsiu Hsieh , Chris Ferrie

Quantum neural networks (QNNs) have generated excitement around the possibility of efficiently analyzing quantum data. But this excitement has been tempered by the existence of exponentially vanishing gradients, known as barren plateau…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-11-02 Arthur Pesah , M. Cerezo , Samson Wang , Tyler Volkoff , Andrew T. Sornborger , Patrick J. Coles

Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs) may be a path to quantum advantage on Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers. A natural question is whether noise on NISQ devices places fundamental limitations on VQA performance. We…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-03-05 Samson Wang , Enrico Fontana , M. Cerezo , Kunal Sharma , Akira Sone , Lukasz Cincio , Patrick J. Coles