Mitigating Noise-Induced Barren Plateaus Using a Non-Unitary Ansatz: Application to Molecular Electronic Transport
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2605.30572 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 28 May 2026] Title:Mitigating Noise-Induced Barren Plateaus Using a Non-Unitary Ansatz: Application to Molecular Electronic Transport Authors:Sasanka Dowarah, Abeda Sultana Shamma, Yazdan Maghsoud, G. Andrés Cisneros, Michael Kolodrubetz View a PDF of the paper titled Mitigating Noise-Induced Barren Plateaus Using a Non-Unitary Ansatz: Application to Molecular Electronic Transport, by Sasanka Dowarah and 4 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) offer a promising route toward simulating many-body quantum systems on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) hardware. However, their scalability is severely limited by noise-induced barren plateaus (NIBPs), where hardware noise causes the gradients of the cost function to vanish exponentially with circuit depth, rendering optimization impossible. In this work, we demonstrate that introducing nonunitary elements into the variational ansatz can mitigate NIBPs in open-quantum systems. Using an analytically tractable infinite-range dissipative Ising model, we show that a nonunitary ansatz restores finite gradients in the presence of depolarizing noise, enabling convergence to the correct symmetry-broken steady state. We also develop a Floquet-type variational ansatz in which each layer repeats the same parameters, reducing the deep variational circuit to an effective quantum channel whose fixed points can be analyzed directly. We then extend these ideas to a realistic quantum-chemistry system by simulating electron transport through Oligophenylethynylene-sulfurmethyl (OPE-SMe) using Hamiltonians and jump operators of the model derived from first-principles polarizable QM/MM calculations. Our results show that nonunitary variational ansätze provide a scalable and physically grounded route for simulating open-system steady states on NISQ hardware, offering a pathway to overcoming one of the limitations of current quantum hardware. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2605.30572 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2605.30572v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.30572 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Sasanka Dowarah [view email] [v1] Thu, 28 May 2026 21:06:54 UTC (17,321 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Mitigating Noise-Induced Barren Plateaus Using a Non-Unitary Ansatz: Application to Molecular Electronic Transport, by Sasanka Dowarah and 4 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-05 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)