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Applied Mathematics and Statistics

From Problem-Structured QAOA to Problem-Agnostic Variational MaxCut Solvers: Representation, Redundancy, and Optimization Landscapes

Leonardo Lavagna, Massimo Panella

Published Oct 13, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Variational quantum optimization provides a useful setting for examining how circuit structure, parameterization, and trainability interact in practice. Objectives: Among the most promising variational quantum algorithms, the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) depends critically on circuit architecture, but greater circuit complexity does not necessarily lead to easier optimization or better solutions. Using the Maximum Cut (MaxCut) problem on graphs as a controlled setting, we investigate how variational behavior changes as problem-specific QAOA structure is progressively removed, with particular attention to representational capacity, optimization geometry, and finite-budget trainability. Methods: We analytically characterize a graph-agnostic product-state formulation of MaxCut and derive exact equivalences, redundancies, and local-landscape properties. These results motivate a controlled comparison among separable product ansätze, a representative graphagnostic entangling circuit, and graph-structured QAOA at several depths, including a parameter-count-matched control. The numerical benchmark comprises 95 small unweighted graph instances optimized under a common objective-evaluation budget. Results: The product-state formulation preserves the exact discrete MaxCut optimum, while its strict local maxima correspond to classical cuts that are stable under singlevertex flips. Redundant phase parameters increase optimization effort without enlarging the objective-relevant family. Under the prescribed optimization budget, the productstate ansatz attains higher average solution quality than the tested QAOA depths while requiring substantially fewer objective evaluations. The graph-agnostic entangling comparator provides no consistent advantage over the separable baseline, and a simple classical local-search method remains highly competitive. Conclusion: In the regime considered here, objective-relevant parameterization and optimization geometry can be as important as circuit richness.

DOI
10.53941/ams.2026.100021

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Variational quantum optimization provides a useful setting for examining how circuit structure, parameterization, and trainability interact in practice. Objectives: Among the most promising variational quantum algorithms, the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) depends critically on circuit architecture, but greater circuit complexity does not necessarily lead to easier optimization or better solutions. Using the Maximum Cut (MaxCut) problem on graphs as a controlled setting, we investigate how variational behavior changes as problem-specific QAOA structure is progressively removed, with particular attention to representational capacity, optimization geometry, and finite-budget trainability. Methods: We analytically characterize a graph-agnostic product-state formulation of MaxCut and derive exact equivalences, redundancies, and local-landscape properties. These results motivate a controlled comparison among separable product ansätze, a representative graphagnostic entangling circuit, and graph-structured QAOA at several depths, including a parameter-count-matched control. The numerical benchmark comprises 95 small unweighted graph instances optimized under a common objective-evaluation budget. Results: The product-state formulation preserves the exact discrete MaxCut optimum, while its strict local maxima correspond to classical cuts that are stable under singlevertex flips. Redundant phase parameters increase optimization effort without enlarging the objective-relevant family. Under the prescribed optimization budget, the productstate ansatz attains higher average solution quality than the tested QAOA depths while requiring substantially fewer objective evaluations. The graph-agnostic entangling comparator provides no consistent advantage over the separable baseline, and a simple classical local-search method remains highly competitive. Conclusion: In the regime considered here, objective-relevant parameterization and optimization geometry can be as important as circuit richness.
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Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) have demonstrated considerable potential in solving NP-hard combinatorial problems in the contemporary near intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era. The quantum approximate optimisation algorithm (QAOA) is one such algorithm, used in solving the maximum cut (Max-Cut) problem for a given graph by successive implementation of LLL quantum circuit layers within a corresponding Trotterised ansatz. The challenge of exploring the cost function of VQAs arising from an exponential proliferation of local minima with increasing circuit depth has been well-documented. However, fewer studies have investigated the impact of circuit depth on QAOA performance in finding the correct Max-Cut solution. Here, we employ basin-hopping global optimisation methods to navigate the energy landscapes for QAOA ansätze for various graphs, and analyse QAOA performance in finding the correct Max-Cut solution. The structure of the solution space is also investigated using discrete path sampling to build databases of local minima and the transition states that connect them, providing insightful visualisations using disconnectivity graphs. We find that the corresponding landscapes generally have a single funnel organisation, which makes it relatively straightforward to locate low-lying minima with good Max-Cut solution probabilities. In some cases below the adiabatic limit the second lowest local minimum may even yield a higher solution probability than the global minimum. This important observation has motivated us to develop broader metrics in evaluating QAOA performance, based on collections of minima obtained from basin-hopping global optimisation. Hence we establish expectation thresholds in elucidating useful solution probabilities from local minima, an approach that may provide significant gains in elucidating reasonable solution probabilities from local minima.
The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) is one of the promising near-term algorithms designed to find approximate solutions for combinatorial optimization problems. The algorithm prepares a parametrized state that is aimed to maximize the expectation value of the objective function of the problem. The circuit for QAOA consists of p layers, and it depends on 2p parameters, the determination of which can be carried out using a variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) subroutine. This is a variational approach for finding optimal parameters, where the quantum state is prepared with a quantum computer, and a classical computer is used for calculating the corresponding objective function value and performing an outer loop optimization routine in order to find optimal parameters. Earlier work on the algorithm has shown that QAOA is closely related to the Quantum Adiabatic Algorithm, which results in noticeable patterns in the optimal parameters. To this purpose, two methods, INTERP and FOURIER, were proposed to exploit this structure by Zhou et al. (2018). In this thesis, I extend upon these results by examining the effectiveness of one of their methods, the INTERP method, on the Max-Cut problem from graph theory. The performance of QAOA using this method was studied on several classes of graphs and benchmarked against the currently best-known classical algorithm Goemans-Williamson, which achieves an approximation ratio of ρ ≈ 0.878 on arbitrary graphs. The classes of graphs examined include cyclic, weighted and unweighted 3-regular, and Erdős–Rényi graphs with edge probabilities of 0.5 and 0.75 and graph sizes ranging from 4 to 16. Moreover, it was investigated if the INTERP method offers an advantage compared to random initialization of parameters and whether or not the method is polynomial in p. It was found that different graph classes lead to similar but different parameter patterns. Furthermore, the performance of QAOA using the INTERP method was dependent on the graph class considered. For the small graphs investigated it was found that QAOA outperforms Goemans-Williamson on ER-0.50, ER-0.75 and weighted 3-regular graphs from p=7 and beyond with respect to how well the expectation of the objective function approximates the optimal value, while for unweighted 3-regular graphs p=6 suffices. However, the calculation of the parameters is costly and requires a number of function evaluations that is on the order of the number of possible bipartitions of small graph with sizes n ≤ 16. Moreover, the numerical results suggested that indeed the method is polynomial in p advocating that the algorithm might be a strong alternative to Goemans-Williamson for large graph sizes, once hardware allows it.
Variational quantum algorithms turn choices of Hamiltonian, ansatz, and parameterization into a classical nonconvex optimization problem. We study how this objective function can be visualized and characterized in ways that help explain optimizer behavior. We distinguish two properties of the objective: the number of local minima encountered along sampled directions and the differences in quality among local-search endpoints. We then ask how a local optimizer, represented by BFGS, compares with adaptive differential evolution, represented by jSO. Rather than comparing jSO with a single local run, we allow BFGS multiple starts within the same function-evaluation budget. This gives local search repeated opportunities to explore different basins and provides a stronger baseline for asking when a global evolutionary solver is useful. We study these questions using VQE and QAOA, focusing on how frustra- tion, circuit depth, parameter tying, mixed locality, and nonlinear repa- rameterization change the Hamiltonian expectation-value objective seen by the classical optimizer. Increasing independent circuit depth raises the sampled local-minimum count without making global search more effective. Parameter tying, by contrast, produces both more repeated local structure and much larger differences in quality among local-search endpoints, and in this regime adaptive differential evolution outperforms function-evaluation-matched multistart BFGS. The comparison shows that the number of local minima alone does not determine whether global search is advantageous: the important distinction is whether different basins lead to similarly good solutions or to substantially different objective values. These results provide a practical workflow for connecting model construction, objective- function geometry, empirical diagnostics, and optimizer choice.
Variational quantum algorithms have emerged as a cornerstone of contemporary quantum algorithms research. While they have demonstrated considerable promise in solving problems of practical interest, efficiently determining the minimal quantum resources necessary to obtain such a solution remains an open question. In this work, inspired by concepts from classical machine learning, we investigate the impact of overparameterization on the performance of variational algorithms. Our study focuses on the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) -- a prominent variational quantum algorithm designed to solve combinatorial optimization problems. We investigate if circuit overparametrization is necessary and sufficient to solve such problems in QAOA, considering two representative problems -- MAX-CUT and MAX-2-SAT. For MAX-CUT we observe that overparametriation is both sufficient and (statistically) necessary for attaining exact solutions, as confirmed numerically for up to 202020 qubits. In fact, for MAX-CUT on 2-regular graphs we show the necessity to be exact, based on the analytically found optimal depth. In sharp contrast, for MAX-2-SAT, underparametrized circuits suffice to solve most instances. This result highlights the potential of QAOA in the underparametrized regime, supporting its utility for current noisy devices.
Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) for combinatorial optimization routinely employ entangling gates as a default design choice, yet the role of entanglement, in its amount and structure, remains poorly understood. This gap is particularly consequential for problems governed by diagonal Hamiltonians, whose ground states are classical product states and therefore require no entanglement in principle, raising the fundamental question of whether and how entangling gates help or hinder the variational search. We investigate this question for MaxCut by introducing two complementary control mechanisms that provide smooth, monotonic control over hardware-efficient ansatz (HEA) entanglement as quantified by the Meyer-Wallach measure QQQ, and by benchmarking against QAOA as a problem-structured reference. Tracking the entanglement trajectory Q(t)Q(t)Q(t) throughout VQA training reveals that when the ansatz grants the optimizer indirect control over entanglement through its parameters, it consistently drives entanglement down. In line with this tendency, a fully separable ansatz outperforms all entangled hardware-efficient configurations, establishing a monotonic relationship: less problem-agnostic entanglement yields better performance. In contrast, QAOA, whose entanglement is structurally derived from the problem Hamiltonian, maintains high entanglement yet achieves competitive solution quality, demonstrating that entanglement structure, not merely quantity, determines its utility. These findings suggest that HEAs for diagonal Hamiltonians are inappropriate and that variational approaches to combinatorial optimization should prioritize problem-structured circuit designs.