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arXiv:2601.16679

Classical Regularization in Variational Quantum Eigensolvers

Yury Chernyak, Ijaz Ahamed Mohammad, Martin Plesch

quant-phSubmitted Jan 23, 2026• Announced Jan 26, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

While quantum computers are a very promising tool for the far future, in their current state of the art they remain limited both in size and quality. This has given rise to hybrid quantum-classical algorithms, where the quantum device performs only a small but vital part of the overall computation. Among these, variational quantum algorithms (VQAs), which combine a classical optimization procedure with quantum evaluation of a cost function, have emerged as particularly promising. However, barren plateaus and ill-conditioned optimization landscapes remain among the primary obstacles faced by VQAs, often leading to unstable convergence and high sensitivity to initialization. Motivated by this challenge, we investigate whether a purely classical remedy, standard L2 squared-norm regularization, can systematically stabilize hybrid quantum-classical optimization. Specifically, we augment the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) objective with a quadratic penalty proportional to the squared norm of the parameters, without modifying the quantum circuit or measurement process. Across all tested Hamiltonians, H2, LiH, and the Random Field Ising Model (RFIM), we observe improved performance over a broad window of the regularization strength. Our large-scale numerical results demonstrate that classical regularization provides a robust, system-independent mechanism for mitigating VQE instability, enhancing the reliability and reproducibility of variational quantum optimization without altering the underlying quantum circuit.

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Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering

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While quantum computers are a very promising tool for the far future, in their current state of the art they remain limited both in size and quality. This has given rise to hybrid quantum-classical algorithms, where the quantum device performs only a small but vital part of the overall computation. Among these, variational quantum algorithms (VQAs), which combine a classical optimization procedure with quantum evaluation of a cost function, have emerged as particularly promising. However, barren plateaus and ill-conditioned optimization landscapes remain among the primary obstacles faced by VQAs, often leading to unstable convergence and high sensitivity to initialization. Motivated by this challenge, we investigate whether a purely classical remedy, standard L2 squared-norm regularization, can systematically stabilize hybrid quantum-classical optimization. Specifically, we augment the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) objective with a quadratic penalty proportional to the squared norm of the parameters, without modifying the quantum circuit or measurement process. Across all tested Hamiltonians, H2, LiH, and the Random Field Ising Model (RFIM), we observe improved performance over a broad window of the regularization strength. Our large-scale numerical results demonstrate that classical regularization provides a robust, system-independent mechanism for mitigating VQE instability, enhancing the reliability and reproducibility of variational quantum optimization without altering the underlying quantum circuit.
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Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs) are a class of hybrid quantum-classical algorithms that leverage on classical optimization tools to find the optimal parameters for a parameterized quantum circuit. One relevant application of VQAs is the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE), which aims at steering the output of the quantum circuit to the ground state of a certain Hamiltonian. Recent works have provided global convergence guarantees for VQEs under suitable local surjectivity and smoothness hypotheses, but little has been done in characterizing convergence of these algorithms when the underlying quantum circuit is affected by noise. In this work, we derive an upper bound on the error on the optimal parameters of a VQE under the effect of different coherent and incoherent noise processes. We then procced to show robust convergence guarantees of the algorithm to the perturbed optimal parameters. Our work provides novel theoretical insight into the behavior of VQAs subject to noise. Furthermore, we accompany our results with numerical simulations implemented via Pennylane.
The variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) is a hybrid algorithm that has the potential to provide a quantum advantage in practical chemistry problems that are currently intractable on classical computers. VQE trains parameterized quantum circuits using a classical optimizer to approximate the eigenvalues and eigenstates of a given Hamiltonian. However, VQE faces challenges in task-specific design and machine-specific architecture, particularly when running on noisy quantum devices. This can have a negative impact on its trainability, accuracy, and efficiency, resulting in noisy quantum data. We propose variational denoising, an unsupervised learning method that employs a parameterized quantum neural network to improve the solution of VQE by learning from noisy VQE outputs. Our approach can significantly decrease energy estimation errors and increase fidelities with ground states compared to noisy input data for the H2 , LiH, and BeH2 molecular Hamiltonians and the transverse field Ising model. Surprisingly, it only requires noisy data for training. Variational denoising can be integrated into quantum hardware, increasing its versatility as an end-to-end quantum processing for quantum data. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
The variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) is a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm for finding the minimum eigenvalue of a Hamiltonian that involves the optimization of a parameterized quantum circuit. Since the resulting optimization problem is in general nonconvex, the method can converge to suboptimal parameter values that do not yield the minimum eigenvalue. In this work, we address this shortcoming by adopting the concept of variational adiabatic quantum computing (VAQC) as a procedure to improve VQE. In VAQC, the ground state of a continuously parameterized Hamiltonian is approximated via a parameterized quantum circuit. We discuss some basic theory of VAQC to motivate the development of a hybrid quantum-classical homotopy continuation method. The proposed method has parallels with a predictor-corrector method for numerical integration of differential equations. While there are theoretical limitations to the procedure, we see in practice that VAQC can successfully find good initial circuit parameters to initialize VQE. We demonstrate this with two examples from quantum chemistry. Through these examples, we provide empirical evidence that VAQC, combined with other techniques (an adaptive termination criteria for the classical optimizer and a variance-based resampling method for the expectation evaluation), can provide more accurate solutions than “plain” VQE, for the same amount of effort.
With rapid advances in quantum hardware, a central question is whether quantum devices with or without full error correction can outperform classical computers on practically relevant problems. Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) have gained significant attention as promising candidates in this pursuit, particularly for combinatorial optimization problems. While reports of their challenges and limitations continue to accumulate, many studies remain optimistic based on small-scale, idealized testing setups, leaving doubt about the scalability of VQAs for large-scale problems. We systematically investigate this scaling behavior by analyzing how classical optimizers minimize variational quantum loss functions for random Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization instances in the presence of uncertainty, modeled as effective Gaussian noise. We find that the critical noise threshold for successful optimization decreases rapidly as system size grows. This decline exceeds what can be explained solely by shrinking loss variance, confirming deeper, fundamental limitations in the loss landscapes of VQAs beyond barren plateaus. Translating these thresholds into required measurement shots reveals that achieving sufficient precision in the evaluated loss values quickly becomes impractical, even for moderatelysized problems. Our findings demonstrate serious scalability challenges for VQAs in optimization stemming from mere uncertainty, indicating potential barriers to achieving practical quantum advantage with current hybrid approaches.
Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) has emerged as a prominent hybrid quantum-classical algorithm for near-term quantum computing, particularly in applications like quantum machine learning. However, the performance of VQE is significantly constrained by the limitations of classical optimization methods employed to minimize the expectation value of the Hamiltonian. Traditional VQE approaches often suffer from slow convergence and sensitivity to initial conditions, particularly when dealing with complex, high-dimensional problems encountered in machine learning scenarios. This work introduces a novel adaptive quantum computing framework for VQE optimization, designed to dynamically adjust the quantum circuit parameters during the optimization process. By continuously monitoring the optimization progress and intelligently modifying the parameters, we aim to accelerate convergence and improve the robustness of VQE algorithms for machine learning tasks. The core idea is to shift from a static, fixed-parameter VQE to a dynamic, adaptive one. We explore various adaptive control strategies and demonstrate their potential to significantly reduce the number of iterations required to reach a solution, leading to improved computational efficiency and enabling VQE to tackle more complex machine learning problems within the constraints of current quantum hardware. The research focuses on the theoretical underpinnings and the design principles of this adaptive approach, laying the foundation for future implementations and experimental validation.