How Much Entanglement Do Quantum Optimization Algorithms Require?

TL;DR

This paper investigates the role of entanglement in quantum optimization algorithms, showing that controlled entanglement dynamics influence convergence speed and providing insights for designing more effective algorithms.

Contribution

It reveals how entanglement generation and removal affect ADAPT-QAOA performance, offering guidance for optimizing entanglement management in quantum algorithms.

Findings

Higher initial entanglement correlates with faster convergence.

ADAPT-QAOA can flexibly entangle and disentangle qubits during execution.

Standard QAOA quickly generates but cannot efficiently remove excess entanglement.

Abstract

Many classical optimization problems can be mapped to finding the ground states of diagonal Ising Hamiltonians, for which variational quantum algorithms such as the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) provide heuristic methods. Because the solutions of such classical optimization problems are necessarily product states, it is unclear how entanglement affects their performance. An Adaptive Derivative-Assembled Problem-Tailored (ADAPT) variation of QAOA improves the convergence rate by allowing entangling operations in the mixer layers whereas it requires fewer CNOT gates in the entire circuit. In this work, we study the entanglement generated during the execution of ADAPT-QAOA. Through simulations of the weighted Max-Cut problem, we show that ADAPT-QAOA exhibits substantial flexibility in entangling and disentangling qubits. By incrementally restricting this flexibility, we find that a larger amount of entanglement entropy at earlier stages coincides with faster convergence at later stages. In contrast, while the standard QAOA quickly generates entanglement within a few layers, it cannot remove excess entanglement efficiently. Our results demonstrate that the role of entanglement in quantum optimization is subtle and provide guidance for building favorable features into quantum optimization algorithms.