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The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) has been one of the leading candidates for near-term quantum advantage in gate-model quantum computers. From its inception, this algorithm has sparked the desire for comparison between…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-12-08 Colin Campbell , Edward Dahl

Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) have demonstrated considerable potential in solving NP-hard combinatorial problems in the contemporary near intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era. The quantum approximate optimisation algorithm (QAOA)…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-05-09 Boy Choy , David J. Wales

Quantum optimization allows for up to exponential quantum speedups for specific, possibly industrially relevant problems. As the key algorithm in this field, we motivate and discuss the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA),…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-11-18 Jonas Stein , Maximilian Zorn , Leo Sünkel , Thomas Gabor

Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) have enabled a wide range of applications on near-term quantum devices. However, their scalability is fundamentally limited by barren plateaus, where the probability of encountering large gradients…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-07-22 Elias Zapusek , Ivan Rojkov , Florentin Reiter

Variational Quantum Algorithms are promising candidates for near-term quantum computing, yet they face scalability challenges due to barren plateaus, where gradients vanish exponentially relative to system size. Recent conjectures suggest…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-21 Sabri Meyer , Francesco Scala , Francesco Tacchino , Aurelien Lucchi

The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) requires that circuit parameters are determined that allow one to sample from high-quality solutions to combinatorial optimization problems. Such parameters can be obtained using either…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-01-11 David Headley , Frank K. Wilhelm

Variational quantum algorithms are viewed as promising candidates for demonstrating quantum advantage on near-term devices. These approaches typically involve the training of parameterized quantum circuits through a classical optimization…

The Quantum Alternating Operator Ansatz (QAOA) is a prominent variational quantum algorithm for solving combinatorial optimization problems. Its effectiveness depends on identifying input parameters that yield high-quality solutions.…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-10-10 Joel Rajakumar , John Golden , Andreas Bärtschi , Stephan Eidenbenz

We introduce a quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) for continuous optimization. The algorithm is based on the dynamics of a quantum system moving in an energy potential which encodes the objective function. By approximating…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-02-04 Guillaume Verdon , Juan Miguel Arrazola , Kamil Brádler , Nathan Killoran

When the gate set has continuous parameters, synthesizing a unitary operator as a quantum circuit is always possible using exact methods, but finding minimal circuits efficiently remains a challenging problem. The landscape is very…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-01-07 Janani Gomathi , Alex Meiburg

Barren plateaus, which means the training gradients become extremely small, pose a major challenge in optimizing parameterized quantum circuits, often making the learning process impractically slow or stall. This work shows why using neural…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-12-03 Zhehao Yi , Rahul Bhadani

Several quantities important in condensed matter physics, quantum information, and quantum chemistry, as well as quantities required in meta-optimization of machine learning algorithms, can be expressed as gradients of implicitly defined…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-11-28 Shahnawaz Ahmed , Nathan Killoran , Juan Felipe Carrasquilla Álvarez

The barren plateau phenomenon, in which cost-function gradients of variational quantum algorithms vanish exponentially, remains a central obstacle for near-term quantum computing. Existing analyses typically depend on t-design or…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-19 Tomohiro Nishiyama , Yoshihiko Hasegawa

The quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) generates an approximate solution to combinatorial optimization problems using a variational ansatz circuit defined by parameterized layers of quantum evolution. In theory, the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-09-24 Rebekah Herrman , Phillip C. Lotshaw , James Ostrowski , Travis S. Humble , George Siopsis

Variational quantum algorithms use non-convex optimization methods to find the optimal parameters for a parametrized quantum circuit in order to solve a computational problem. The choice of the circuit ansatz, which consists of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-03-13 Roeland Wiersema , Dylan Lewis , David Wierichs , Juan Carrasquilla , Nathan Killoran

Inspired by a class of algorithms proposed by Farhi et al. (arXiv:1411.4028), namely the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA), we present a circuit-based quantum algorithm to search for a needle in a haystack, obtaining the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2017-06-21 Zhang Jiang , Eleanor G. Rieffel , Zhihui Wang

An important application for near-term quantum computing lies in optimization tasks, with applications ranging from quantum chemistry and drug discovery to machine learning. In many settings --- most prominently in so-called parametrized or…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-03-27 Maria Schuld , Ville Bergholm , Christian Gogolin , Josh Izaac , Nathan Killoran

Barren plateaus are a notorious problem in the optimization of variational quantum algorithms and pose a critical obstacle in the quest for more efficient quantum machine learning algorithms. Many potential reasons for barren plateaus have…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-05-02 Ankit Kulshrestha , Ilya Safro

Training quantum neural networks (QNNs) using gradient-based or gradient-free classical optimisation approaches is severely impacted by the presence of barren plateaus in the cost landscapes. In this paper, we devise a framework for…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-06-04 Yidong Liao , Min-Hsiu Hsieh , Chris Ferrie

The encoding of classical to quantum data mapping through trigonometric functions within arithmetic-based quantum computation algorithms leads to the exploitation of multivariate distributions. The studied variational quantum gate learning…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-11-12 Ziqing Guo , Jan Balewski , Wenshuo Hu , Alex Khan , Ziwen Pan