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Q3SAT-GPT: A Generative Model for Discovering Quantum Circuits for the 3-SAT Problem

Pratim Ugale, Ilya Tyagin, Karunya Shirali, Kien X. Nguyen, Ilya Safro

Published Apr 28, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This work introduces Q3SAT-GPT, a generative model for discovering quantum circuits for the Max-E3-SAT problem. Our method learns from high-performing QAOA-style ansätze and generates candidate circuits that generalize beyond the training set. To create high-quality supervision, we also introduce Mosaic Adaptive QAOA (MosaicA-QAOA), an adaptive strategy for constructing low-depth QAOA circuits by selecting subsets of mixer operators in each step, rather than inserting operators sequentially. The resulting circuits serve as training data for the generative model, allowing it to learn effective circuit design patterns while eliminating the need for costly variational optimization during generation. Experiments show that our framework attains excellent solution quality with shallow circuits and scales significantly better than both our adaptive construction procedure and conventional variational baselines. Our results establish generative modeling as a high-performance route toward the scalable discovery of quantum optimization circuits, demonstrating that these models can effectively internalize circuit logic while providing a foundation for future, instance-aware inductive biases.

DOI
10.5281/zenodo.19838791

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This work introduces Q3SAT-GPT, a generative model for discovering quantum circuits for the Max-E3-SAT problem. Our method learns from high-performing QAOA-style ansätze and generates candidate circuits that generalize beyond the training set. To create high-quality supervision, we also introduce Mosaic Adaptive QAOA (MosaicA-QAOA), an adaptive strategy for constructing low-depth QAOA circuits by selecting subsets of mixer operators in each step, rather than inserting operators sequentially. The resulting circuits serve as training data for the generative model, allowing it to learn effective circuit design patterns while eliminating the need for costly variational optimization during generation. Experiments show that our framework attains excellent solution quality with shallow circuits and scales significantly better than both our adaptive construction procedure and conventional variational baselines. Our results establish generative modeling as a high-performance route toward the scalable discovery of quantum optimization circuits, demonstrating that these models can effectively internalize circuit logic while providing a foundation for future, instance-aware inductive biases.
This work introduces Q3SAT-GPT, a generative model for discovering quantum circuits for the Max-E3-SAT problem. Our method learns from high-performing QAOA-style ansätze to directly generate candidate circuits. To create high-quality supervision, we also introduce Mosaic Adaptive QAOA (MosaicADAPT-QAOA), an adaptive strategy for constructing low-depth QAOA circuits by selecting subsets of mixer operators in each step, rather than inserting operators sequentially. The resulting circuits serve as training data for the generative model, allowing it to learn effective circuit design patterns while eliminating the need for costly variational optimization at inference time. Experiments show that our framework attains strong solution quality with shallow circuits and scales significantly better than both our adaptive construction procedure and conventional variational baselines. Our results establish generative modeling as a high-performance route toward the scalable discovery of quantum optimization circuits, demonstrating that these models can effectively internalize circuit logic while providing a foundation for future, instance-aware inductive biases. Reproducibility: The source code is available at https://github.com/pratimugale/Q3SAT-GPT.
The recently proposed QAOA-GPT framework demonstrated that generative pre-trained transformers can learn mappings between problem graphs and optimized quantum circuits for the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA). In this work, we extend QAOA-GPT to Higher-Order Unconstrained Binary Optimization (HUBO) problems, focusing on spin-glass Hamiltonians that include cubic interaction terms. Using FEATHER graph embeddings to encode topological information, we train the model on graph-circuit pairs generated via ADAPT-QAOA and evaluate its performance on 8- and 16-qubit instances embedded on heavy-hex lattices. The generative model produces adaptive QAOA-like circuits and corresponding variational parameters in a single forward pass, bypassing the iterative classical optimization loop. The generated circuits achieve average approximation ratios exceeding 0.95, closely matching classically optimized ADAPT-QAOA results, while maintaining consistent parameter distributions across circuit depths. These results demonstrate that QAOA-GPT generalizes effectively to higher-order cost Hamiltonians and complex energy landscapes, establishing generative modeling as a scalable pathway toward autonomous variational circuit design and quantum algorithm discovery in the NISQ era.
Quantum computing has the potential to improve our ability to solve certain optimization problems that are computationally difficult for classical computers by offering new algorithmic approaches that may provide speedups under specific conditions. In this work, we introduce QAOA-GPT, a generative framework that leverages Generative Pretrained Transformers (GPT) to directly synthesize quantum circuits for solving quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problems, and demonstrate it on the Max-Cut problem on graphs. To diversify the training circuits and ensure their quality, we have generated a synthetic dataset using the adaptive QAOA approach, a method that incrementally builds and optimizes problemspecific circuits. The experiments conducted on a curated set of graph instances demonstrate that QAOA-GPT generates high quality quantum circuits for new problem instances unseen in the training as well as successfully parametrizes QAOA. Our results show that using QAOA-GPT to generate quantum circuits will significantly decrease both the computational overhead of classical QAOA and adaptive approaches that often use gradient evaluation to generate the circuit and the classical optimization of the circuit parameters. Our work shows that generative AI could be a promising avenue to generate compact quantum circuits in a scalable way. Reproducibility: source code and computational results are available at https://github.com/IlyaTyagin/QAOA-GPT.
While combinatorial optimization problems are central to many scientific and engineering applications, their solution remains challenging due to exponentially large search spaces. Variational quantum algorithms offer a promising route for tackling such problems, yet their practical performance is limited by repeated quantum circuit evaluations and classical parameter updates. In this work, we introduce DQAOA-GPT, a hybrid framework that integrates the distributed quantum approximate optimization algorithm (DQAOA), which decomposes a large optimization problem into smaller sub-problems, with GPT-based quantum circuit generation for solving those sub-problems. Rather than relying on iterative variational optimization, the proposed approach uses a trained generative model to directly generate high-quality quantum circuits for the decomposed sub-problems. As a benchmark, we evaluate DQAOA-GPT against conventional DQAOA on dense HUBO optimization problems with up to 100 decision variables. The results demonstrate that DQAOA-GPT significantly reduces computational cost while maintaining competitive solution quality, with larger acceleration observed for larger sub-problem sizes. Although this work focuses on benchmark-scale validation, the framework provides a promising foundation for larger-scale combinatorial optimization in hybrid HPC-QC environments through increased GPU resources and parallel computing capability.
Quantum computing is a computational paradigm with the potential to outperform classical methods for a variety of problems. Proposed recently, the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) is considered as one of the leading candidates for demonstrating quantum advantage in the near term. QAOA is a variational hybrid quantum-classical algorithm for approximately solving combinatorial optimization problems. The quality of the solution obtained by QAOA for a given problem instance depends on the performance of the classical optimizer used to optimize the variational parameters. In this paper, we formulate the problem of finding optimal QAOA parameters as a learning task in which the knowledge gained from solving training instances can be leveraged to find high-quality solutions for unseen test instances. To this end, we develop two machine-learning-based approaches. Our first approach adopts a reinforcement learning (RL) framework to learn a policy network to optimize QAOA circuits. Our second approach adopts a kernel density estimation (KDE) technique to learn a generative model of optimal QAOA parameters. In both approaches, the training procedure is performed on small-sized problem instances that can be simulated on a classical computer; yet the learned RL policy and the generative model can be used to efficiently solve larger problems. Extensive simulations using the IBM Qiskit Aer quantum circuit simulator demonstrate that our proposed RL- and KDE-based approaches reduce the optimality gap by factors up to 30.15 when compared with other commonly used off-the-shelf optimizers.
As quantum computing continues to gain attention, there is growing interest in how classical machine learning can assist quantum workflows in practice. Automated circuit design, sometimes referred to as Quantum Architecture Search (QAS), is a natural application but relies on the ability to model the quantum system to support learning as the number of qubits grows. This challenge is central to QAS, and much of the current literature that proposes new ways to model the ansatz focuses on small systems, often around ten qubits. In this work, we propose a complementary approach that separates a small-scale structure discovery phase, where a reusable modular circuit block is learned on small instances where classical learning is feasible, from a deployment phase, where the blocks are used to create the ansatz required for larger problems. To this end, we introduce Reinforcement Learning for Variational Quantum Circuits (RLVQC), formulating QAS as a sequential decision-making problem. We evaluate our methodology on Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) instances derived from Maximum Cut, Maximum Clique, and Minimum Vertex Cover. Our RLVQC Block model is trained to discover a modular two-qubit block that can generalize QAOA-style methods and that is often beneficial compared to learning non-modular ansatzes. The blocks discovered on n=8 instances remain effective when deployed on larger instances (n=12 and n=16), supporting the feasibility of reusing learned modular structure across problem sizes. While we do not aim to establish a new state-of-the-art solver or an advantage over classical methods, our results provide evidence that modular ansatz structure can be learned on smaller instances and then extended to larger ones without requiring learning on systems with a large number of qubits, where quantum computing becomes interesting but classical computation becomes impractical.