Does provable absence of barren plateaus imply classical simulability?

ABSTRACT: A large amount of effort has recently been put into understanding the barren plateau phenomenon. In this perspective article, we face the increasingly loud elephant in the room and ask a question that has been hinted at by many but not explicitly addressed: Can the structure that allows one to avoid barren plateaus also be leveraged to efficiently simulate the loss classically? We collect evidence-on a case-by-case basis-that many commonly used models whose loss landscapes avoid barren plateaus can also admit classical simulation, provided that one can collect some classical data from quantum devices during an initial data acquisition phase. This follows from the observation that barren plateaus result from a curse of dimensionality, and that current approaches for solving them end up enco

SUBMITTER: Cerezo M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12378457 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature