The quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) is widely seen as a possible usage of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. We analyze the algorithm as a bang-bang protocol with fixed total time and a randomized greedy optimization scheme. We investigate the performance of bang-bang QAOA on MAX-2-SAT, finding the appearance of phase transitions with respect to the total time. As the total time increases, the optimal bang-bang protocol experiences a number of jumps and plateaus in performance, which match up with an increasing number of switches in the standard QAOA formulation. At large times, it becomes more difficult to find a globally optimal bang-bang protocol and performances suffer. We also investigate the effects of changing the initial conditions of the randomized optimization algorithm and see that better local optima can be found by using an adiabatic initialization.

中文翻译：

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爆炸协议下的量子近似优化算法研究

量子近似优化算法（QAOA）被广泛视为嘈杂的中尺度量子（NISQ）设备的一种可能用法。我们将算法分析为固定总时间和随机贪婪优化方案的bang-bang协议。我们调查了Bang-2-bang QAOA在MAX-2-SAT上的性能，发现了相变相对于总时间的出现。随着总时间的增加，最佳bang-bang协议在性能上会经历许多跳跃和平稳期，这与标准QAOA公式中越来越多的开关相匹配。通常，找到全局最佳的爆炸协议变得更加困难，并且性能会受到影响。