This work introduces a scalable variational framework based on Pauli correlation encoding (PCE) and applies it to electric power demand portfolio optimization, establishing PCE as a physically motivated and qubit-efficient framework for large-scale combinatorial optimization.
Abstract
Variational quantum algorithms offer a promising route to combinatorial optimization, but their applicability is limited by the challenge of encoding large-scale problems within restricted qubit resources. In this work, we introduce a scalable variational framework based on Pauli correlation encoding (PCE) and apply it to electric power demand portfolio optimization. Binary variables are represented through expectation values of Pauli correlation operators, which encode multi-body correlations of the quantum state and provide a continuous relaxation enabling compact representations with few qubits. We further propose a two-stage hybrid formulation, in which a time-averaged problem provides initialization for a time-resolved optimization. Numerical simulations demonstrate near-optimal performance across problem sizes ranging from $m$=18 to 10,296, with normalized cost gaps on the order of $10^{-4}$ relative to solutions with certified optimality. We show that the performance is governed by the interplay between continuous relaxation and discretization: the effective resolution of the correlator representation determines how reliably improvements in the continuous loss translate into better discrete solutions, with larger systems exhibiting more consistent behavior. Finally, we demonstrate robustness on a trapped-ion quantum processor, where high-quality solutions are obtained despite noise and finite sampling. These results establish PCE as a physically motivated and qubit-efficient framework for large-scale combinatorial optimization.
Pauli-based simulators offer a promising route to large-scale classical simulation of quantum circuits in the low-magic regime. Yet their applicability remains largely limited to forward simulation, making them inadequate for optimization-driven quantum tasks such as variational state preparation and parameter initialization. Existing approaches either lack native support for gradient-based optimization or suffer from severe gradient bias. Here we propose the stochastic Pauli-path simulator (SPPS), a computational framework for large-scale quantum optimization that enables unbiased stochastic gradient estimation via Pauli-path sampling across optimization iterations. Our theoretical analysis shows that the proposed simulator yields unbiased gradient estimates and admits provable convergence guarantees. We systematically evaluate our proposal, including quantum eigensolver benchmarks with up to 100 qubits and quantum neural network benchmarks with up to 40 qubits. Across these tasks, SPPS faithfully tracks optimization dynamics, converges within minutes, and broadens the role of Pauli-based simulation from forward estimation to large-scale quantum optimization.
Kai-Ning Zhang, Xin-Biao Wang, Kunsheng Li et al.· 0 citations
We introduce Quantum-Informed Surrogate Sampling (QISS), a post-processing framework that generates candidate solutions to combinatorial optimization problems from low-weight correlations of shallow quantum circuits. The quantum device estimates local observables, which are directly accessible by repeated measurements and for which a wide range of error-mitigation tools are available, while candidate solutions are generated classically without explicit dependence on the combinatorial optimization problem itself. We evaluate QISS on Maximum Cut and Maximum Independent Set problems on $N$ variables and show that only $O(N)$ low-order correlators from shallow circuits suffice to produce competitive solutions that surpass vanilla QAOA. For MaxCut on 3-regular graphs, QISS from $p=3$ QAOA correlators outperforms vanilla QAOA at $p=17$ on average, with further improvements possible by warm-starting QAOA. We validate the procedure on the 54-qubit IQM Emerald quantum device and demonstrate its noise resilience. Our results support a regime for near-term optimization in which shallow circuits serve not as direct samplers but as generators of informative statistics for scalable classical sampling.
This work examines when structured long-range connectivity provides a useful resource, focusing on sparse power-of-two (PWR2) coupling graphs, and identifies circuit geometry and qubit reconfigurability as task-dependent resources for variational algorithms.
Helene M. Losl, Aydin Deger, Andrew J. Daley· 0 citations
We study the separation of geometric effects from quantum interference in quantum optimization algorithms. Constrained optimization problems such as routing, assignment, and scheduling are often encoded as product spaces of local variables, together with global feasibility penalties. The central algorithmic question we address is how a constraint-preserving mixing operator transports quantum amplitude across an exponential search space in the presence of local and global constraints. We develop a framework that separates three effects that are usually intermixed: amplitude transport, coherent interference among transported amplitudes, and problem-dependent classical postprocessing. We show that the mixing operator alone does not have a target-seeking ability. Concretely, the normalized distribution induced by its amplitude transport moves toward the distance profile of a uniformly random configuration. Thus, quantum sampling advantage may only arise when the phases of the many computational paths reaching a target configuration are sufficiently aligned for their amplitudes to reinforce. We show that, when the cost phases are engineered so that these paths add coherently, a number of circuit alternations growing only logarithmically with problem size suffices to convert the sum of their absolute contributions into a lower bound on the target amplitude, yielding a certified success probability independent of the ambient Hilbert-space dimension, the search-space size, or the feasible-set cardinality. We develop applications to problem-specific transpilation diagnostics, scalable hardware probes, constraint-induced classical maps of quantum-generated samples, the attribution of solution quality between the quantum distribution and classical post-processing in hybrid quantum-classical workflows and connections to distance-partitioned product spaces from classical coding theory.
Chinonso Onah, Stuart Hadfield, K. Michielsen· 1 citation
We present a variational quantum framework for finite-horizon quantum control based on hardware-efficient ans\"atze. The objective is to steer a quantum system from a given initial state to a desired target state over a fixed time horizon by minimizing a terminal cost defined in terms of state fidelity. Instead of explicitly synthesizing time-dependent control fields or enforcing Hamiltonian reachability constraints, the proposed method reformulates the control objective as a variational optimization problem in which a hardware-efficient parameterized quantum circuit provides a surrogate parameterization of the terminal evolution. The circuit consists of alternating layers of single-qubit rotations and entangling gates, whose parameters are optimized using classical routines to minimize the terminal infidelity. This formulation avoids reliance on problem-specific or physics-inspired ans\"atze, providing a flexible and implementation-friendly approach compatible with near-term quantum devices. Numerical experiments on multi-qubit state-transfer benchmarks demonstrate high-fidelity state transfer while highlighting the trade-off between ansatz expressivity, optimization complexity, and scalability with respect to system size and circuit depth.
N. Dehaghani, Rafał Wiśniewski, A. Aguiar· 0 citations
Variational quantum circuits (VQCs) are flexible models for optimization and learning based on parameterized quantum circuits trained via cost minimization. A key challenge in their optimization is the presence of barren plateaus, where gradients vanish exponentially with the number of qubits, severely limiting trainability. Local cost functions mitigate this issue by restricting evaluation to qubit subsets, improving gradient scaling. In this work, we propose an evolutionary strategy-inspired method to automatically identify informative qubit subsets for constructing local cost functions. Operating at the level of qubit selection rather than parameter optimization, the approach enables adaptive, circuit-aware objective design. Numerical experiments using the PennyLane framework show that the method alleviates barren plateaus and improves optimization performance in the identity-gate learning problem.
R. Lung, T. Mihoc· Proceedings of the Genetic a...· 0 citations