Yusuf Tahir | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Dealing with locality in QAOA

Shallow-depth QAOA on sparse, high-diameter MaxCut instances faces a locality bottleneck: at depth $p$, local observables can depend only on a bounded neighborhood of the circuit interaction graph. We propose a transport-augmented QAOA that keeps the MaxCut cost Hamiltonian unchanged but enriches the mixer with optimized, unweighted shortcut couplings (scheduled $XX+YY$) to collapse the effective interaction-graph diameter. Using exact finite-depth support recursions, we relate optimal shortcut placement to bounded-diameter graph augmentation, and show in benchmarks that (unlike ma-QAOA) performance becomes effectively size-invariant once the diameter is reduced. For bipartite families (base diameter 4), reducing the interaction path to $d=1$ raises the ensemble-averaged approximation ratio from 0.7378 (ma-QAOA) to 0.9767 at $p=1$ ($σ=0.0251$, nine system sizes); on random trees (base diameter 10), at $p=2$ it improves from 0.9226 to 0.9997 ($σ=0.0001$).

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Congestion-free routing on quantum chips

Limited connectivity makes nonlocal quantum gates expensive on near-neighbor hardware, where compilation typically relies on SWAP transport, inheriting both depth overhead and path congestion. We present a swap-free routing framework in which higher levels of a qudit act as orthogonal spectral buses that transport control information without moving the computational state. We show that exact congestion relief in nearest-neighbor architectures requires local Hilbert-space expansion. In this model, a nonlocal operation over a path of length $L$ requires $2L+1$ logical routing primitives, compared to the $3L$ baseline. Overlapping routes remain distinguishable through bus labels encoded in the same physical qudits. This routing algebra extends to Boolean fan-in at a common target: multiple controls arriving on distinct buses trigger a local unitary based on an arbitrary Boolean function of bus digits, yielding multi-control operations of depth $2L + D_g + O(1)$ for fan-in size $K$ and target-synthesis cost $D_g$. We prove decodability, reversibility, and correctness for CNOT and Boolean fan-in, along with a state-count lower bound $d \geq 2^{K+1}$ for exact overlap routing. Cirq simulations confirm single-control correctness and zero crosstalk. Compiler-level benchmarks on QFT, QAOA, and mirror-interaction circuits verify the predicted congestion law and transport reduction. Noisy QuTiP simulations show that the architectural advantage depends on higher-level coherence and speed. These results identify spectral qudit routing as a congestion-relief architecture that separates nonlocal control delivery from local target-side aggregation, providing a minimal mechanism for overcoming qubit routing limitations.

quant-ph↗