{"paper":{"title":"The QAOA gets stuck starting from a good classical string","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"quant-ph","authors_text":"Daniel Ranard, Edward Farhi, Eugene Tang, Madelyn Cain, Sam Gutmann","submitted_at":"2022-07-11T18:00:01Z","abstract_excerpt":"The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) is designed to maximize a cost function over bit strings. While the initial state is traditionally a uniform superposition over all strings, it is natural to try expediting the QAOA: first use a classical algorithm to produce some good string, and then run the standard QAOA starting in the computational basis state associated with that string. Here we report numerical experiments that show this method of initializing the QAOA fails dramatically, exhibiting little to no improvement of the cost function. We provide multiple analytical argumen"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2207.05089","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2207.05089/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}