Universal resources for quantum approximate optimization algorithm and quantum annealing
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) is a variational ansatz that resembles the Trotterized dynamics of a quantum annealing (QA) protocol. This work formalizes this connection formally and empirically, showing that the angles of a multilayer QAOA circuit converge to universal QA trajectories. Furthermore, the errors in both QAOA circuits and QA paths act as thermal excitations in pseudo-Boltzmann probability distributions whose temperature decreases with the invested resource—i.e., integrated angles or total time—and which in QAOA also contain a higher temperature arising from the Trotterization. This also means that QAOA and QA are cooling protocols and simulators of partition functions whose target temperature can be tuned by rescaling the universal trajectory. The average cooling power of both methods exhibits favorable algebraic scalings with respect to the target temperature and problem size, whereby in QAOA the coldest temperature is inversely proportional to the number of layers, T ∼ 1 / p , and to the integrated angles—or integrated interactions in QA.
Source: Physical Review Research
DOI: 10.1103/hxv2-sbr7
Language: English
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,625
OpenAlex ID: W4416071404