Alignment between initial state and mixer improves QAOA performance for constrained optimization

Quantum alternating operator ansatz (QAOA) has a strong connection to the adiabatic algorithm, which it can approximate with sufficient depth. However, it is unclear to what extent the lessons from the adiabatic regime apply to QAOA as executed in practice with small to moderate depth. In this paper, we demonstrate that the intuition from the adiabatic algorithm applies to the task of choosing the QAOA initial state. Specifically, we observe that the best performance is obtained when the initial state of QAOA is set to be the ground state of the mixing Hamiltonian, as required by the adiabatic algorithm. We provide numerical evidence using the examples of constrained portfolio optimization problems with both low ( p ≤ 3) and high ( p = 100) QAOA depth. Additionally, we successfully apply QAOA with XY mixer to portfolio optimization on a trapped-ion quantum processor using 32 qubits and discuss our findings in near-term experiments.