Deep-Circuit QAOA

Quantum 9, 1882 (2025).

https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2025-10-13-1882

Despite its popularity, several empirical and theoretical studies suggest that the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) has persistent issues in providing a substantial practical advantage. Numerical results for few qubits and shallow circuits are, at best, ambiguous, and the well-studied barren plateau phenomenon draws a rather sobering picture for deeper circuits. However, as more and more sophisticated strategies are proposed to circumvent barren plateaus, it stands to reason which issues are actually fundamental and which merely constitute – admittedly difficult – engineering tasks. By shifting the scope from the usually considered parameter landscape to the quantum state space’s geometry we can distinguish between problems that are fundamentally difficult to solve, independently of the parameterization, and those for which there could at least exist a favorable parameterization. Here, we find clear evidence for a ‘no free lunch’-behavior of QAOA on a general optimization task with no further structure; individual cases have, however, to be analyzed more carefully.
Based on our analysis, we propose and justify a performance indicator for the deep-circuit QAOA that can be accessed by solely evaluating statistical properties of the classical objective function. We further discuss the various favorable properties a generic QAOA instance has in the asymptotic regime of infinitely many gates, and elaborate on the immanent drawbacks of finite circuits. We provide several numerical examples of a deep-circuit QAOA method based on local search strategies and find that – in alignment with our performance indicator – some special function classes, like QUBOs, indeed admit a favorable optimization landscape.