Southwest Quantum Information and Technology

Noise-induced barren plateaus in variational quantum algorithms due to non-unital and non-Markovian noise models

Presenting Author: Phattharaporn Singkanipa, University of Southern California
Contributing Author(s): Daniel A. Lidar

Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs) are a leading practical application of Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices. Despite their promise, VQAs suffer from the problem of vanishing gradients, also known as the barren plateau (BP) phenomenon. BP can arise from fundamentally different mechanism, e.g., parameter initialization, structure of the problem Hamiltonian, and noise. Noise-induced barren plateaus (NIBPs) have been shown to exist subject to unital CPTP maps. We generalize this result to non-unital CPTP and non-Markovian noise channels. Our results are illustrated with numerical simulations of various noise models.

(Session 5 : Thursday from 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm)