BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:researchseminars.org CALSCALE:GREGORIAN X-WR-CALNAME:researchseminars.org BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Zoë Holmes (EPFL) DTSTART:20240507T140000Z DTEND:20240507T150000Z DTSTAMP:20260423T035908Z UID:TalentQ/3 DESCRIPTION:Title: Does provable absence of barren plateaus imply classical simulability? \nby Zoë Holmes (EPFL) as part of Quantum Spain\n\n\nAbstract\nA large am ount of effort has recently been put into understanding the barren plateau phenomenon. In this perspective article\, we face the increasingly loud e lephant 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 barr en plateaus also be leveraged to efficiently simulate the loss classically ? We present strong evidence that commonly used models with provable absen ce of barren plateaus are also classically simulable\, provided that one c an 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 s olving them end up encoding the problem into some small\, classically simu lable\, subspaces. This sheds serious doubt on the non-classicality of the information processing capabilities of parametrized quantum circuits for barren plateau-free landscapes and on the possibility of superpolynomial a dvantages from running them on quantum hardware. We end by discussing cave ats in our arguments\, the potential of smart initializations\, and by hig hlighting new opportunities that our perspective raises.\n LOCATION:https://researchseminars.org/talk/TalentQ/3/ END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR