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Auteurs principaux: Schwägerl, Tim, Chai, Yahui, Hartung, Tobias, Jansen, Karl, Kühn, Stefan
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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Accès en ligne:https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.03073
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author Schwägerl, Tim
Chai, Yahui
Hartung, Tobias
Jansen, Karl
Kühn, Stefan
author_facet Schwägerl, Tim
Chai, Yahui
Hartung, Tobias
Jansen, Karl
Kühn, Stefan
contents Variational quantum algorithms and, in particular, variants of the varational quantum eigensolver have been proposed to address combinatorial optimization (CO) problems. Using only shallow ansatz circuits, these approaches are deemed suitable for current noisy intermediate-scale quantum hardware. However, the resources required for training shallow variational quantum circuits often scale superpolynomially in problem size. In this study we numerically investigate what this scaling result means in practice for solving CO problems using Max-Cut as a benchmark. For fixed resources, we compare the average performance of training a shallow variational quantum circuit, sampling with replacement, and a greedy algorithm starting from the same initial point as the quantum algorithm. We identify a minimum problem size for which the quantum algorithm can consistently outperform sampling and, for each problem size, characterize the separation between the quantum algorithm and the greedy algorithm. Furthermore, we extend the average case analysis by investigating the correlation between the performance of the algorithms by instance. Our results provide a step towards meaningful benchmarks of variational quantum algorithms for CO problems for a realistic set of resources.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_03073
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Benchmarking Variational Quantum Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization in Practice
Schwägerl, Tim
Chai, Yahui
Hartung, Tobias
Jansen, Karl
Kühn, Stefan
Quantum Physics
Variational quantum algorithms and, in particular, variants of the varational quantum eigensolver have been proposed to address combinatorial optimization (CO) problems. Using only shallow ansatz circuits, these approaches are deemed suitable for current noisy intermediate-scale quantum hardware. However, the resources required for training shallow variational quantum circuits often scale superpolynomially in problem size. In this study we numerically investigate what this scaling result means in practice for solving CO problems using Max-Cut as a benchmark. For fixed resources, we compare the average performance of training a shallow variational quantum circuit, sampling with replacement, and a greedy algorithm starting from the same initial point as the quantum algorithm. We identify a minimum problem size for which the quantum algorithm can consistently outperform sampling and, for each problem size, characterize the separation between the quantum algorithm and the greedy algorithm. Furthermore, we extend the average case analysis by investigating the correlation between the performance of the algorithms by instance. Our results provide a step towards meaningful benchmarks of variational quantum algorithms for CO problems for a realistic set of resources.
title Benchmarking Variational Quantum Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization in Practice
topic Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.03073