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Main Authors: Khatri, Nikhil, Zohren, Stefan, Matos, Gabriel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.22310
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author Khatri, Nikhil
Zohren, Stefan
Matos, Gabriel
author_facet Khatri, Nikhil
Zohren, Stefan
Matos, Gabriel
contents A principal concern in the optimisation of parametrised quantum circuits is the presence of barren plateaus, which present fundamental challenges to the scalability of applications, such as variational algorithms and quantum machine learning models. Recent proposals for these methods have increasingly used the linear combination of unitaries (LCU) procedure as a core component. In this work, we prove that an LCU of trainable parametrised circuits is still trainable. We do so by analytically deriving the expression for the variance of the expectation when applying the LCU to a set of parametrised circuits, taking into account the postselection probability. These results extend to incoherent superpositions. We support our conclusions with numerical results on linear combinations of fermionic Gaussian unitaries (matchgate circuits). Our work shows that sums of trainable parametrised circuits are still trainable, and thus provides a method to construct new families of more expressive trainable circuits. We argue that there is a scope for a quantum speed-up when evaluating these trainable circuits on a quantum device.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_22310
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Trainability of Parametrised Linear Combinations of Unitaries
Khatri, Nikhil
Zohren, Stefan
Matos, Gabriel
Quantum Physics
A principal concern in the optimisation of parametrised quantum circuits is the presence of barren plateaus, which present fundamental challenges to the scalability of applications, such as variational algorithms and quantum machine learning models. Recent proposals for these methods have increasingly used the linear combination of unitaries (LCU) procedure as a core component. In this work, we prove that an LCU of trainable parametrised circuits is still trainable. We do so by analytically deriving the expression for the variance of the expectation when applying the LCU to a set of parametrised circuits, taking into account the postselection probability. These results extend to incoherent superpositions. We support our conclusions with numerical results on linear combinations of fermionic Gaussian unitaries (matchgate circuits). Our work shows that sums of trainable parametrised circuits are still trainable, and thus provides a method to construct new families of more expressive trainable circuits. We argue that there is a scope for a quantum speed-up when evaluating these trainable circuits on a quantum device.
title Trainability of Parametrised Linear Combinations of Unitaries
topic Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.22310