Multi-block ADMM Heuristics for Mixed-Binary Optimization on Classical and Quantum Computers

Understand

Solving combinatorial optimization problems on current noisy quantum devices is currently being advocated for (and restricted to) binary polynomial optimization with equality constraints via quantum heuristic approaches.

• This is achieved using, e.g., the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) and the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA).
• We present a decomposition-based approach to extend the applicability of current approaches to "quadratic plus convex" mixed binary optimization (MBO) problems, so as to solve a broad class of real-world optimization problems.
• In the MBO framework, we show that the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) can split the MBO into a binary unconstrained problem (that can be solved with quantum algorithms), and continuous constrained convex subproblems (that can be solved cheaply with classical optimization solvers).