Quantum dropout: On and over the hardness of quantum approximate optimization algorithm

A combinatorial optimization problem becomes very difficult in situations where the energy landscape is rugged, and the global minimum locates in a narrow region of the configuration space. When using the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) to tackle these harder cases, we find that di...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review research 2023-06, Vol.5 (2), p.023171, Article 023171
Main Authors: Wang, Zhenduo, Zheng, Pei-Lin, Wu, Biao, Zhang, Yi
Format: Article
Language:English
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A combinatorial optimization problem becomes very difficult in situations where the energy landscape is rugged, and the global minimum locates in a narrow region of the configuration space. When using the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) to tackle these harder cases, we find that difficulty mainly originates from the QAOA quantum circuit instead of the cost function. To alleviate the issue, we selectively drop the clauses defining the quantum circuit while keeping the cost function intact. Due to the combinatorial nature of the optimization problems, the dropout of clauses in the circuit does not affect the solution. Our numerical results confirm improvements in QAOA's performance with various types of quantum-dropout implementations.
ISSN:2643-1564
2643-1564
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.023171