Efficient Training of Layerwise-Commuting PQCs with Parallel Gradient Estimation

Variational quantum algorithms, such as the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE), have a very high cost due to the large number of measurement outcomes that must be acquired from the quantum device during training. This is due in large part to the use of the parameter shift rule for estimating the gradient at each step, which requires two circuit evaluations per parameter. It was recently shown that if all the gate generators in the ansatz commute with each other, then the complete gradient vector can be found from a single evaluation of an augmented circuit (Bowles et al., 2023), and this has the potential to significantly reduce the quantum cost. Unfortunately, this is quite a severe restriction, as it prevents the ansatz from having a nontrivial dynamical Lie algebra (DLA). In order to obtain a more expressive ansatz than permitted by the commutation requirement, we construct it iteratively and train it in a layerwise fashion using the parallel gradient method. For VQE training of an 8-qubit transverse field Ising model (TFIM) on an ideal simulator, we show that this approach is able to reach a lower energy using fewer circuit evaluations than the parameter shift rule with a more conventional ansatz.