Natural evolutionary strategy optimizes parametric quantum circuits, a critical component of variational quantum algorithms

https://phys.org/news/2023-09-natural-evolutionary-strategy-boosts-quantum.html

"combines gradient-free natural evolutionary strategy with gradient descent to overcome barren plateau... optimize quantum circuits in terms of the number of function evaluations and circuit size scaling... NESSGD combines natural evolutionary strategy with stochastic gradient descent, NESAdaBelief combines natural evolutionary strategy with a gradient descent variant... parameter shift rule paves way for practical applications on quantum hardware"