# Investigating and Mitigating Barren Plateaus in Variational Quantum Circuits: A Survey arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.17706 ยท HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17706/ ## Key facts - Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). - Builds on 30 of its 100 references that are in the map. - First posted on arXiv 25 Jul 2024. ## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 30) - [Barren plateaus in quantum neural network training landscapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.11173/) (2018) - [The power of quantum neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00027/) (2020) - [Noise-Induced Barren Plateaus in Variational Quantum Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.14384/) (2020) - [Connecting ansatz expressibility to gradient magnitudes and barren plateaus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.02138/) (2021) - [Barren Plateaus in Variational Quantum Computing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00781/) (2024) - [Absence of Barren Plateaus in Quantum Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.02966/) (2020) - [Entanglement Induced Barren Plateaus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.15968/) (2020) - [Layerwise learning for quantum neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.14904/) (2020) - [Quantum circuit architecture search for variational quantum algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.10217/) (2020) - [Effect of barren plateaus on gradient-free optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12245/) (2020) - [Does provable absence of barren plateaus imply classical simulability?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09121/) (2023) - [Equivalence of quantum barren plateaus to cost concentration and narrow gorges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05868/) (2021) - [Escaping from the Barren Plateau via Gaussian Initializations in Deep Variational Quantum Circuits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09376/) (2022) - [On barren plateaus and cost function locality in variational quantum algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.10530/) (2020) - [Subtleties in the trainability of quantum machine learning models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14753/) (2021) - [Analyzing the barren plateau phenomenon in training quantum neural networks with the ZX-calculus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.01828/) (2021) - [Generative quantum machine learning via denoising diffusion probabilistic models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05866/) (2023) - [VSQL: Variational Shadow Quantum Learning for Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.08288/) (2020) - [Optimal training of variational quantum algorithms without barren plateaus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14543/) (2021) - [BEINIT: Avoiding Barren Plateaus in Variational Quantum Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13751/) (2022) - [Avoiding Barren Plateaus with Classical Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13418/) (2022) - [VQC-Based Reinforcement Learning with Data Re-uploading: Performance and Trainability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.11555/) (2024) - [Laziness, Barren Plateau, and Noise in Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.09313/) (2022) - [Mitigating barren plateaus of variational quantum eigensolvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13539/) (2022) - [Hierarchical Learning for Quantum ML: Novel Training Technique for Large-Scale Variational Quantum Circuits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12929/) (2023) - [Quark: A Gradient-Free Quantum Learning Framework for Classification Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.01311/) (2022) - [Quantum neural network with ensemble learning to mitigate barren plateaus and cost function concentration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.06026/) (2024) - [Enhancing the Trainability of Variational Quantum Circuits with Regularization Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.01606/) (2024) - [Barren plateaus are amplified by the dimension of qudits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.08190/) (2024) - [Quantum Neural Network Software Testing, Analysis, and Code Optimization for Advanced IoT Systems: Design, Implementation, and Visualization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10914/) (2024) ## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10) - [Enhancing variational quantum algorithms by balancing training on classical and quantum hardware](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16361/) (2025) - [Large Language Models Can Help Mitigate Barren Plateaus in Quantum Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13166/) (2025) - [How to find expressible and trainable parameterized quantum circuits?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14451/) (2026) - [Investigating the Lottery Ticket Hypothesis for Variational Quantum Circuits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.11190/) (2025) - [Quantum Machine Learning for Cybersecurity: A Taxonomy and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15286/) (2025) - [Trainability-Oriented Hybrid Quantum Regression via Geometric Preconditioning and Curriculum Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.11942/) (2026) - [Distributed Quantum Gaussian Processes for Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.15006/) (2026) - [Uncertainty Quantification for Quantum Computing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.25039/) (2026) - [A Quantum-Classical Hybrid Framework for Multivariate Time-Series Forecasting Complexity-Fidelity Trade-offs and Limitations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.16358/) (2026) - [Hybrid Variational Quantum Circuits for Multivariate Regression and High-Dimensional Data Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.17358/) (2026) ## Abstract (arXiv) In recent years, variational quantum circuits (VQCs) have been widely explored to advance quantum circuits against classic models on various domains, such as quantum chemistry and quantum machine learning. Similar to classic machine-learning models, VQCs can be trained through various optimization approaches, such as gradient-based or gradient-free methods. However, when employing gradient-based methods, the gradient variance of VQCs may dramatically vanish as the number of qubits or layers increases. This issue, a.k.a. Barren Plateaus (BPs), seriously hinders the scaling of VQCs on large datasets. To mitigate the barren plateaus, extensive efforts have been devoted to tackling this issue through diverse strategies. In this survey, we conduct a systematic literature review of recent works from both investigation and mitigation perspectives. Furthermore, we propose a new taxonomy to categorize most existing mitigation strategies into five groups and introduce them in detail. Also, we compare the concurrent survey papers about BPs. Finally, we provide insightful discussion on future directions for BPs.