Elementary Proof of QAOA Convergence
Lennart Binkowski, Gereon Koßmann, Timo Ziegler, René Schwonnek · arXiv (Cornell University) · 2023
The Quantum Alternating Operator Ansatz (QAOA) and its predecessor, the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm, are one of the most widely used quantum algorithms for solving combinatorial optimization problems. However, as there is yet no rigorous proof of convergence for the QAOA, we provide one in this paper. The proof involves retracing the connection between the Quantum Adiabatic Algorithm and the QAOA, and naturally suggests a refined definition of the `phase separator' and `mixer' keywords.