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arXiv:2311.07869 · Physica Scripta

Hybrid GRU-CNN bilinear parameters initialization for quantum approximate optimization algorithm

Zuyu Xu, Pengnian Cai, Kang Shen, Tao Yang, Yuanming Hu, Maogao Gong, Yunlai Zhu, Zuheng Wu, Yuehua Dai, Fei Yang

Published Jun 20, 2024• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA), a pivotal paradigm in the realm of variational quantum algorithms (VQAs), offers promising computational advantages for tackling combinatorial optimization problems. Well-defined initial circuit parameters, responsible for preparing a parameterized quantum state encoding the solution, play a key role in optimizing QAOA. However, classical optimization techniques encounter challenges in discerning optimal parameters that align with the optimal solution. In this work, we propose a hybrid optimization approach that integrates Gated Recurrent Units (GRU), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), and a bilinear strategy as an innovative alternative to conventional optimizers for predicting optimal parameters of QAOA circuits. GRU serves to stochastically initialize favorable parameters for depth-1 circuits, while CNN predicts initial parameters for depth-2 circuits based on the optimized parameters of depth-1 circuits. To assess the efficacy of our approach, we conducted a comparative analysis with traditional initialization methods using QAOA on Erdős-Rényi graph instances, revealing superior optimal approximation ratios. We employ the bilinear strategy to initialize QAOA circuit parameters at greater depths, with reference parameters obtained from GRU-CNN optimization. This approach allows us to forecast parameters for a depth-12 QAOA circuit, yielding a remarkable approximation ratio of 0.998 across 10 qubits, which surpasses that of the random initialization strategy and the PPN2 method at a depth of 10. The proposed hybrid GRU-CNN bilinear optimization method significantly improves the effectiveness and accuracy of parameters initialization, offering a promising iterative framework for QAOA that elevates its performance.

DOI
10.1088/1402-4896/ad5a50

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Abstract The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA), a pivotal paradigm in the realm of variational quantum algorithms (VQAs), offers promising computational advantages for tackling combinatorial optimization problems. Well-defined initial circuit parameters, responsible for preparing a parameterized quantum state encoding the solution, play a key role in optimizing QAOA. However, classical optimization techniques encounter challenges in discerning optimal parameters that align with the optimal solution. In this work, we propose a hybrid optimization approach that integrates Gated Recurrent Units (GRU), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), and a bilinear strategy as an innovative alternative to conventional optimizers for predicting optimal parameters of QAOA circuits. GRU serves to stochastically initialize favorable parameters for depth-1 circuits, while CNN predicts initial parameters for depth-2 circuits based on the optimized parameters of depth-1 circuits. To assess the efficacy of our approach, we conducted a comparative analysis with traditional initialization methods using QAOA on Erdős-Rényi graph instances, revealing superior optimal approximation ratios. We employ the bilinear strategy to initialize QAOA circuit parameters at greater depths, with reference parameters obtained from GRU-CNN optimization. This approach allows us to forecast parameters for a depth-12 QAOA circuit, yielding a remarkable approximation ratio of 0.998 across 10 qubits, which surpasses that of the random initialization strategy and the PPN2 method at a depth of 10. The proposed hybrid GRU-CNN bilinear optimization method significantly improves the effectiveness and accuracy of parameters initialization, offering a promising iterative framework for QAOA that elevates its performance.
Abstract The Quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) is a quantum-classical hybrid algorithm aiming to produce approximate solutions for combinatorial optimization problems. In the QAOA, the quantum part prepares a quantum parameterized state that encodes the solution, where the parameters are optimized by a classical optimizer. However, it is difficult to find optimal parameters when the quantum circuit becomes deeper. Hence, there is numerous active research on the performance and the optimization cost of QAOA. In this work, we build a convolutional neural network to predict parameters of depth p + 1 QAOA instance by the parameters from the depth p QAOA counterpart. We propose two strategies based on this model. First, we recurrently apply the model to generate a set of initial values for a certain depth QAOA. It successfully initiates depth 10 QAOA instances, whereas each model is only trained with the parameters from depths less than 6. Second, the model is applied repetitively until the maximum expected value is reached. An average approximation ratio of 0.9759 for Max-Cut over 264 Erdős–Rényi graphs is obtained, while the optimizer is only adopted for generating the first input of the model.
Abstract The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) represents a promising approach for tackling combinatorial optimization challenges on near-term quantum devices. Central to QAOA optimization is the minimization of the expectation of the problem Hamiltonian for parameterized trial quantum states, which motivates the exploration of advanced optimization techniques. In this study, we propose a novel combinatorial optimization strategy, CNN-CVaR-QAOA, which integrates a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) with Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) to optimize QAOA circuits. By replacing the traditional loss function with CVaR and leveraging CNN for variational quantum parameter optimization, we demonstrate the superior efficacy of CNN-CVaR-QAOA through experimental validation on Erdos-Renyi random graphs. Our results show enhanced approximation ratios across various graph configurations. Furthermore, we investigate the influence of the CVaR parameter (α\alphaα) on algorithm performance, revealing that lower α\alphaα values lead to smoother objective functions and improved approximation ratios. CNN-CVaR-QAOA offers significant advantages in optimizing QAOA parameters, particularly in the context of small-scale quantum devices, highlighting its potential to enhance QAOA optimization efforts across diverse optimization domains.
Abstract The quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) is a leading iterative variational quantum algorithm for heuristically solving combinatorial optimization problems. A large portion of the computational effort in QAOA is spent by the optimization steps, which require many executions of the quantum circuit. Therefore, there is active research focusing on finding better initial circuit parameters, which would reduce the number of required iterations and hence the overall execution time. While existing methods for parameter initialization have shown great success, they often offer a single set of parameters for all problem instances. We propose a practical method that uses a simple, fully connected neural network that leverages previous executions of QAOA to find better initialization parameters tailored to a new given problem instance. We benchmark state-of-the-art initialization methods for solving the MaxCut problem of Erdős-Rényi graphs using QAOA and show that our method is consistently the fastest to converge while also yielding the best final result. Furthermore, the parameters predicted by the neural network are shown to match very well with the fully optimized parameters, to the extent that no iterative steps are required, thereby effectively realizing an iteration-free QAOA scheme.
The quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) is a leading iterative variational quantum algorithm for heuristically solving combinatorial optimization problems. A large portion of the computational effort in QAOA is spent by the optimization steps, which require many executions of the quantum circuit. Therefore, there is active research focusing on finding better initial circuit parameters, which would reduce the number of required iterations and hence the overall execution time. While existing methods for parameter initialization have shown great success, they often offer a single set of parameters for all problem instances. We propose a practical method that uses a simple, fully connected neural network that leverages previous executions of QAOA to find better initialization parameters tailored to a new given problem instance. We benchmark state-of-the-art initialization methods for solving the MaxCut problem of Erdős-Rényi graphs using QAOA and show that our method is consistently the fastest to converge while also yielding the best final result. Furthermore, the parameters predicted by the neural network are shown to match very well with the fully optimized parameters, to the extent that no iterative steps are required, thereby effectively realizing an iterative-free QAOA scheme.
Quantum Computing promises to solve complex combinatorial optimization problems more efficiently than classical methods, with the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) being a leading candidate. Recent fixed-parameter variations of QAOA eliminate costly run-time optimization, but determining their optimal initialization as well as the number of required layers (p) for a target solution remains a critical, unsolved challenge. In this work, we propose a novel approach using a Graph Neural Network (GNN) to predict QAOA performance: Based on a graph representation of the problem, the GNN forecasts the probability of the optimal solution in the resulting distribution across different parameter initializations and layer depths for a wide variety of combinatorial optimization problems. We demonstrate that the GNN accurately predicts QAOA performance within a 10% margin of the true values. Furthermore, the model exhibits strong generalization capabilities across unseen problem classes, larger problem sizes, and higher layer counts. Our approach allows to identify viable problem instances for QAOA and to select an adequate parameter initialization strategy with minimal layer depth, without the need of costly parameter optimization.
The quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) has numerous promising applications in solving the combinatorial optimization problems on near-term Noisy Intermediate Scalable Quantum (NISQ) devices. QAOA has a quantum-classical hybrid structure. Its quantum part consists of a parameterized alternating operator ansatz, and its classical part comprises an optimization algorithm, which optimizes the parameters to maximize the expectation value of the problem Hamiltonian. This expectation value depends highly on the parameters, this implies that a set of good parameters leads to an accurate solution. However, at large circuit depth of QAOA, it is difficult to achieve global optimization due to the multiple occurrences of local minima or maxima. In this paper, we propose a parameters fixing strategy which gives high approximation ratio on average, even at large circuit depths, by initializing QAOA with the optimal parameters obtained from the previous depths. We test our strategy on the Max-cut problem of certain classes of graphs such as the 3-regular graphs and the Erdös-Rényi graphs.