Pith. sign in

REVIEW 1 cited by

Quantum Approximate Optimization of Non-Planar Graph Problems on a Planar Superconducting Processor

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2004.04197 v3 pith:WAG5ZHWT submitted 2020-04-08 quant-ph

classification quant-ph
keywords problemsqaoaquantumgraphoptimizationhardwareperformanceapproximate
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
0 comments
read the original abstract

We demonstrate the application of the Google Sycamore superconducting qubit quantum processor to combinatorial optimization problems with the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). Like past QAOA experiments, we study performance for problems defined on the (planar) connectivity graph of our hardware; however, we also apply the QAOA to the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model and MaxCut, both high dimensional graph problems for which the QAOA requires significant compilation. Experimental scans of the QAOA energy landscape show good agreement with theory across even the largest instances studied (23 qubits) and we are able to perform variational optimization successfully. For problems defined on our hardware graph we obtain an approximation ratio that is independent of problem size and observe, for the first time, that performance increases with circuit depth. For problems requiring compilation, performance decreases with problem size but still provides an advantage over random guessing for circuits involving several thousand gates. This behavior highlights the challenge of using near-term quantum computers to optimize problems on graphs differing from hardware connectivity. As these graphs are more representative of real world instances, our results advocate for more emphasis on such problems in the developing tradition of using the QAOA as a holistic, device-level benchmark of quantum processors.

Discussion (0). Continue with ORCID to comment.

Forward citations

Cited by 1 Pith paper

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Exploiting biased noise in variational quantum models

    quant-ph 2025-10 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Twirling amplitude-damping noise into uniform Pauli/depolarising channels reduces expressivity and gradient magnitudes, while preserving the noise bias yields better VQA optimisation in the studied models.

Pith tools