Barren plateaus in classically intractable circuits

Determine whether the phenomenon of barren plateaus is intrinsic to every quantum circuit that cannot be simulated efficiently on classical hardware using Lie-algebraic simulation methods.

Background

The paper discusses barren plateaus as exponentially vanishing gradients that impede variational quantum models from locating global optima. It reports a conjecture from prior work that such plateaus may be unavoidable for circuits whose dynamics cannot be efficiently simulated classically, but does not establish or refute this claim.