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Quantum generative models exploit quantum superposition and entanglement to enhance learning efficiency for both classical and quantum data. Recently, inspired by classical diffusion frameworks, the quantum denoising diffusion probabilistic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-16 Haipeng Cao , Kaining Zhang , Dacheng Tao , Zhaofeng Su

Many experimental proposals for noisy intermediate scale quantum devices involve training a parameterized quantum circuit with a classical optimization loop. Such hybrid quantum-classical algorithms are popular for applications in quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-02-04 Jarrod R. McClean , Sergio Boixo , Vadim N. Smelyanskiy , Ryan Babbush , Hartmut Neven

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

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

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

Despite extensive research efforts, few quantum algorithms for classical optimization demonstrate realizable quantum advantage. The utility of many quantum algorithms is limited by high requisite circuit depth and nonconvex optimization…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-01-27 Taylor L. Patti , Jean Kossaifi , Anima Anandkumar , Susanne F. Yelin

We formalize a rigorous connection between barren plateaus (BP) in variational quantum algorithms and exponential concentration of quantum kernels for machine learning. Our results imply that recently proposed strategies to build BP-free…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-01-16 Pranav Kairon , Jonas Jäger , Roman V. Krems

Quantum algorithms based on parameterized quantum circuits (PQCs) have enabled a wide range of applications on near-term quantum devices. However, existing PQC architectures face several challenges, among which the ``barren plateaus"…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-01-09 Zhenyu Chen , Yuguo Shao , Zhengwei Liu , Zhaohui Wei

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

Machine learning algorithms, both in their classical and quantum versions, heavily rely on optimization algorithms based on gradients, such as gradient descent and alike. The overall performance is dependent on the appearance of local…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-04-26 Pablo Bermejo , Borja Aizpurua , Roman Orus

Current universal quantum computers have a limited number of noisy qubits. Because of this, it is difficult to use them to solve large-scale complex optimization problems. In this paper we tackle this issue by proposing a quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-06-30 Pablo Bermejo , Roman Orus

Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) are a modern family of quantum algorithms designed to solve optimization problems using a quantum computer. Typically VQAs rely on a feedback loop between the quantum device and a classical optimization…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-08-26 Alexey Uvarov

The barren plateau phenomenon, where the gradients of parametrized quantum circuits become vanishingly small, poses a significant challenge in quantum machine learning. While previous studies attempted to explain the barren plateau…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-02-06 Yuhan Yao , Yoshihiko Hasegawa

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

The parameters of the quantum circuit in a variational quantum algorithm induce a landscape that contains the relevant information regarding its optimization hardness. In this work we investigate such landscapes through the lens of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-03-05 Adrián Pérez-Salinas , Hao Wang , Xavier Bonet-Monroig

We prove the existence of barren plateaus in variational quantum algorithms using linear optics with either bosonic or fermionic particles and demonstrate that fermionic linear optics is less susceptible to the barren plateau problem. We…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-21 Matthew D. Horner

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

We analyze the barren plateau phenomenon in the variational optimization of quantum circuits inspired by matrix product states (qMPS), tree tensor networks (qTTN), and the multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz (qMERA). We consider…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-04-14 Enrique Cervero Martín , Kirill Plekhanov , Michael Lubasch

Solving quantum many-body systems is one of the most significant regimes where quantum computing applies. Currently, as a hardware-friendly computational paradigms, variational algorithms are often used for finding the ground energy of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-02-10 Yong Liu , Guangyao Huang , Yizhi Wang , Junjie Wu