# Utility functions for QAOA¶

This section walks through some of the key features provided in EntropicaQAOA, all of which are contained in the utilities.py file. In particular, it illustrates the integration of functionalities from common graph and data analysis packages such as NetworkX and Pandas. We also provide two examples that bring together the functionalities to solve real problems.

# The usual combination of imports from numpy, scipy and matplotlib
from scipy.optimize import minimize
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# import QAOA Parameter classes
from entropica_qaoa.qaoa.parameters import ExtendedParams, StandardParams

# Cost functions and all the utilities
from entropica_qaoa.qaoa.cost_function import QAOACostFunctionOnWFSim, QAOACostFunctionOnQVM
from entropica_qaoa.utilities import *

# Pyquil import
from pyquil.api import get_qc

# Matplotlib raises errors about NetworkX using outdated methods. Nothing we can change, so we suppress the messages.
import warnings
warnings.filterwarnings('ignore')


## Hamiltonians and graphs¶

In QAOA, a problem instance is defined by its corresponding hyperparameters, which refers to a specification of the total number of qubits nqubits, and one or both of the following:

1. The single qubits that have a bias term (denoted singles) and the corresponding bias coefficients (denoted biases).

2. The pairs of qubits that are coupled (denoted pairs), and the corresponding coupling coefficients (denoted couplings).

Equivalently, when viewed as a network graph problem, a QAOA instance is defined by specifying the total number of vertices or nodes in the graph, and one or both of the following:

1. The vertices that have a bias term, and the corresponding bias coefficients.

2. The pairs of vertices that are connected by an edge, and the corresponding edge weight.

The following sections explain how EntropicaQAOA’s utility functions allow for the simple creation of, and conversion between, Hamiltonians and graphs.

### Hyperparameters to Hamiltonian¶

If we have a known set of problem hyperparameters, the hamiltonian_from_hyperparams() method allows us to easily create the corresponding Hamiltonian.

# Specify some hyperparameters
nqubits = 3
singles = [1]
biases = [0.3]
pairs = [[0,1], [1,2]]
couplings = [0.4, 0.6]

# Create the Hamiltonian
h0 = hamiltonian_from_hyperparams(nqubits,singles,biases,pairs,couplings)
print(h0)

(0.4+0j)*Z0*Z1 + (0.6+0j)*Z1*Z2 + (0.3+0j)*Z1


### Random Hamiltonian¶

The .random_hamiltonian() method allows us to generate a random Hamiltonian (problem instance) for a specified number of qubits. It randomly selects a number of biases and number of couplings, then assigns each of them a random value between zero and one. For instance, let’s create two 4-qubit Hamiltonians.

h1 = random_hamiltonian(range(4))
h2 = random_hamiltonian(range(4))
print("h1 =",h1)
print()
print("h2 =",h2)

h1 = (0.22426675667765372+0j)*Z3 + (0.1501986539217275+0j)*Z0*Z1 + (0.9707501010061365+0j)*Z2*Z3

h2 = (0.33295405269057887+0j)*Z0 + (0.9418311774355997+0j)*Z3 + (0.24919377260659348+0j)*Z0*Z2 + (0.298367175101687+0j)*Z0*Z3 + (0.2604542179761158+0j)*Z1*Z3


### Hamiltonians to Graphs¶

We can create a NetworkX graph corresponding to the qubit couplings in h1 using the graph_from_hamiltonian method and then plot it using plot_graph():

g1 = graph_from_hamiltonian(h1)
plot_graph(g1)


### Graphs to Hamiltonians¶

Alternatively, we can work backwards, creating a graph first, then the corresponding Hamiltonian using the hamiltonian_from_graph() method.

Let’s take the graph we have just produced (g1) and convert it back to its corresponding Hamiltonian, which we called h1 above.

H1 = hamiltonian_from_graph(g1)
print('From graph:', H1)
print('')
print('Original:', h1)

From graph: (0.22426675667765372+0j)*Z3 + (0.9707501010061365+0j)*Z3*Z2 + (0.1501986539217275+0j)*Z0*Z1

Original: (0.22426675667765372+0j)*Z3 + (0.1501986539217275+0j)*Z0*Z1 + (0.9707501010061365+0j)*Z2*Z3


### Hyperparameters to Graphs¶

We can also create a graph directly from hyperparameters, using the graph_from_hyperparams() method. Here we use the Hamiltonian created above.

g0 = graph_from_hyperparams(nqubits, singles, biases, pairs, couplings)
plot_graph(g0)


### Random, regular Graphs¶

In recent research on QAOA, there has been interest in the performance of the algorithm on $$k$$-regular graphs, i.e. graphs where every node is connected to exactly $$k$$ other nodes. We can generate such graphs easily using the random_k_regular_graph() function. For instance, let’s create a 3-regular graph with 8 nodes:

G_3_reg = random_k_regular_graph(3, range(8), weighted=True)
plot_graph(G_3_reg)


## Hamiltonians and data¶

One prominent application of QAOA is to solve the weighted MaxCut problem, which may be used as a clustering technique - see, for example, Ref 1. Here, the pairwise distance between a given pair of data points in a dataset is used as the weight on the corresponding graph, and enters the Hamiltonian as the corresponding coupling coefficient between the corresponding qubits.

In the following, we demo some steps of a workflow to use QAOA to solve such a MaxCut problem for clustering. We use simple toy data generated by the gaussian_2Dclusters() function.

### Cluster generation and distance calculations¶

Let’s create a data set of two clusters, where the points in each cluster follow Gaussian statistics.

n_clusters = 2 # Number of clusters we want
n_points = [3,3] # Number of data points in each cluster
means = [[0,0], [2,2]] # Cluster means (the [x,y] coordinates of each cluster centre)

# Covariance matrix: we will use the same one for each of the two clusters here,
# but more generally they could be different
cov_matrix = [[0.1, 0], [0, 0.1]]
cov_matrices = [cov_matrix,cov_matrix]

cluster_data = gaussian_2Dclusters(n_clusters,n_points,means,cov_matrices)
plot_cluster_data(cluster_data)


The next step in setting up the MaxCut problem is to compute the pairwise distances of the points in the dataset, which we can do using the distances_dataset() function. Here we will use the Euclidean distance, but more generally we can ask for any distance metric included in Scipy’s cdist function.

dists = distances_dataset(cluster_data, metric='euclidean')
dists

array([[0.        , 0.89208695, 0.62137939, 2.64589877, 3.57135197,
3.24471024],
[0.89208695, 0.        , 1.47286307, 1.93879133, 2.78453118,
2.46558506],
[0.62137939, 1.47286307, 0.        , 3.01943759, 3.98733177,
3.65947555],
[2.64589877, 1.93879133, 3.01943759, 0.        , 0.992259  ,
0.67660191],
[3.57135197, 2.78453118, 3.98733177, 0.992259  , 0.        ,
0.32805982],
[3.24471024, 2.46558506, 3.65947555, 0.67660191, 0.32805982,
0.        ]])


Note that distances_dataset() can also take and return data in the Pandas dataframe format.

### Distance datasets to Hamiltonians¶

Now that we have the distances between all points in the dataset, we want to generate the corresponding MaxCut Hamiltonian. We can do this easily with the hamiltonian_from_distances() method.

hData = hamiltonian_from_distances(dists)
print(hData)

(0.8920869530576089+0j)*Z0*Z1 + (0.6213793918993751+0j)*Z0*Z2 + (2.6458987711536555+0j)*Z0*Z3 + (3.5713519713338515+0j)*Z0*Z4 + (3.244710235054523+0j)*Z0*Z5 + (1.4728630670136837+0j)*Z1*Z2 + (1.938791326007791+0j)*Z1*Z3 + (2.784531176657113+0j)*Z1*Z4 + (2.4655850590944866+0j)*Z1*Z5 + (3.019437590479767+0j)*Z2*Z3 + (3.987331765143783+0j)*Z2*Z4 + (3.6594755517875734+0j)*Z2*Z5 + (0.9922590043101441+0j)*Z3*Z4 + (0.6766019064351919+0j)*Z3*Z5 + (0.3280598229772459+0j)*Z4*Z5


For simplicity here we have omitted terms proportional to the identity matrix, which are commonly included in the definition of the MaxCut cost function. Since such terms only introduce a global energy shift, they do not affect the optimal configuration that we find as a solution.

## Example 1: Using QAOA to solve MaxCut for the clustering problem¶

Now that we have the Hamiltonian, we can go ahead and run the QAOA to check that the points are clustered correctly. We will use the ExtendedParams class, and three timesteps (p=3). We don’t include any single-qubit bias terms.

n_qubits = 6
p = 3

# Specify some angles
betas = np.random.rand(n_qubits,p)
gammas_singles = []
gammas_pairs = np.random.rand(len(hData),p)
parameters = (betas,gammas_singles,gammas_pairs)

extended_params = ExtendedParams([hData,p],parameters)

# NOTE - the optimiser will reach its maximum number of iterations, but for the parameters being used here,
# the choice maxiter=200 seems to be more than sufficient to get to the optimum with high probability.
cost_function = QAOACostFunctionOnWFSim(hData,
params=extended_params,
scalar_cost_function=False)

res = minimize(cost_function, extended_params.raw(),
tol=1e-3, method="Cobyla", options={"maxiter": 200})
res

    fun: -8.177921421095586
maxcv: 0.0
message: 'Maximum number of function evaluations has been exceeded.'
nfev: 200
status: 2
success: False
x: array([ 1.2968615 ,  1.13140341,  0.45590417,  0.27218615,  0.22005776,
1.21903021,  0.68586607,  0.92049553,  1.5634729 ,  1.54949027,
0.05019311,  1.53142017,  0.99585679, -0.17861998,  0.92000842,
0.73999305,  0.19711567,  0.21175899,  0.05057582,  0.39652405,
1.46430515,  0.84138333,  0.87310902,  1.27336059,  0.47683663,
1.86760206,  0.90165824,  0.97404713,  1.60452064,  0.42105087,
0.72587103,  0.94921258,  0.32042373,  0.92838485,  0.80194516,
1.37924246,  0.7273695 ,  0.31844058,  0.17526702,  0.37083024,
0.48814381,  1.41541468,  1.43040292,  0.5900947 ,  0.11542496,
0.01334736,  0.18902991,  1.72525423,  0.92682988,  0.12635149,
0.07501775,  0.16643011,  0.57625313,  0.05711509,  0.58498862,
0.23702585,  0.71313912,  0.31977506,  0.41922587,  0.71878501,
0.75606292, -0.24765194,  0.4416072 ])


Let us plot the probabilities of the different bitstrings. Since the energies are invariant under a bit flip on all qubits, each bitstring and its complement have identical outcome probabilities.

opt_wfn = cost_function.get_wavefunction(res.x)
probs = opt_wfn.probabilities()
plt.bar(range(len(probs)), probs)
plt.show()


Now we want to find the string corresponding to the optimal solution. Numpy’s argmax function will return the first of the two degenerate solutions. As expected, we find that the first three qubits are in one class, and the second three qubits in another (this is the way the data was constructed above, in two distinct clusters).

optimal_string = np.argmax(probs)
"{0:06b}".format(optimal_string)

'000111'


We can check that the other optimal solution found is the complement bitstring, i.e. 111000:

probs[optimal_string] = 0 # Sets the solution 000111 to have zero probability
optimal_string_complement = np.argmax(probs)
"{0:06b}".format(optimal_string_complement)

'111000'


## Example 2: The Ring of Disagrees¶

The Ring of Diasgrees is a 2-regular graph on a given number of nodes $$n$$. Its simple structure has allowed a number of extremely useful benchmarking results for QAOA to be derived. The ground state has energy $$-n$$ for even $$n$$, and $$-n+1$$ for odd $$n$$, and neighbouring nodes have opposite values (i.e. if a given node has value 1, its neighbour has value 0).

In the paper that originally introduced the QAOA (Ref 2), it was shown numerically that this graph provides a simple example of how the approximation ratio returned by QAOA can be made arbitrarily close to 1 by increasing the parameter $$p$$. For the MaxCut problem, the optimal cost function value returned for a given $$n$$ and $$p$$ was found to be

$C(n,p) = \left(\frac{2p + 1}{2p + 2}\right)n$

This result assumes the StandardParams parameterisation, and that the graph is unweighted (all edge weights equal to 1). Here we verify this result using the ring_of_disagrees() function. Note that subsequent to Ref 2, this result has been derived using analytic methods in Ref 3.

n_nodes = 8
h_disagrees = ring_of_disagrees(n_nodes)
g_disagrees = graph_from_hamiltonian(h_disagrees)
plot_graph(g_disagrees)

def optimise_ring_of_disagrees(pval):

# Initialise angles
betas = np.random.rand(pval)
gammas = np.random.rand(pval)
parameters = (betas, gammas)

# Set up (hyper)parameters
disagrees_params = StandardParams([h_disagrees,pval],parameters)

# Cost function and optimisation
cost_function = QAOACostFunctionOnWFSim(h_disagrees, params=disagrees_params)

res = minimize(cost_function, disagrees_params.raw(),
tol=1e-3, method="BFGS", options={"maxiter": 500})

return res.fun, res.x

p_vals = np.arange(1,5) # p range to consider
output_val = np.zeros((len(p_vals),))
for i in p_vals:

output_val[i-1] = optimise_ring_of_disagrees(i)[0]


Since we have 8 qubits, according to Farhi’s formula we should find the maximum energy to be $$-8 \cdot (3/4,5/6,7/8,9/10) = -(6, 6.67, 7, 7.2)$$ for $$p = (1,2,3,4)$$:

output_val

array([-5.99999999, -6.66666667, -6.99999999, -7.99999999])


For the case $$p=1$$, the optimal angles can be computed analytically, and are given by $$(\beta_{opt}, \gamma_{opt}) = (\pi/8, \pi/4$$) - see Ref 4. We can see that the optimiser does indeed return these angles:

opt_angles = optimise_ring_of_disagrees(1)[1]
opt_angles

array([0.39269308, 0.78538503])


Let’s finish off by running an example of the Ring of Disagrees on the QVM; we would follow a similar method to run the computation on the QPU. We’ll use the optimal angles we have just found to check that the probability distribution of samples we obtain does indeed return the bitstring [0,1,0,1], or its complement [1,0,1,0], with high probability.

Here, we make use of the sample_qaoa_bitstrings function, which executes the circuit defined by the QAOA instance and samples from output multiple times. We can plot the output conveniently using bitstring_histogram.

qvm = get_qc("4q-qvm")

ham_disagrees_4 = ring_of_disagrees(4)
params_disagrees_4 = StandardParams([ham_disagrees_4,1], opt_angles)

bitstrings = sample_qaoa_bitstrings(params_disagrees_4, qvm)
bitstring_histogram(bitstrings)


## More miscellaneous utilities¶

Here we demonstrate the functionality of some additional methods that may be useful in certain contexts.

### Different initial states for QAOA¶

We can easily use an initial state different from $$\left|+ \cdots +\right>$$ for QAOA, by passing a state preparation program for the initial_state argument of the QAOA cost functions. For purely classical states (i.e. not a quantum superposition state) such as $$\left|10 \cdots 10\right>$$, these programs cane be created via prepare_classical_state.

register = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]  # the register to create the state on
state = [1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0]     # the |42> state (encodes the decimal number 42)

prepare42_circuit = prepare_classical_state(register, state)
print(prepare42_circuit)

X 0
X 2
X 4


### Get the bitstring corresponding to the maximum probability state¶

The max_probability_bitstring() method returns the bitstring corresponding to the maximum probability state of a wavefunction.

probs = np.exp(-np.linspace(-5, 10, 16)**2) # just an array of length 16 (corresponds to a 4-qubit system)
probs = probs/probs.sum() # normalise to represent a proper probability distribution
max_prob_state = max_probability_bitstring(probs)
print(max_prob_state)

[0, 1, 0, 1]


### Accuracy scores for QAOA¶

cluster_accuracy() gives accuary scores for a QAOA result, if the true solution is known. The accuracy here is defined as the percentage of bits that are correct compared to the known solution.

cluster_accuracy(max_prob_state, true_labels=[1, 1, 0, 0])

True Labels of samples: [1, 1, 0, 0]
Lowest QAOA State: [0, 1, 0, 1]
Accuracy of Original State: 50.0 %
Accuracy of Complement State: 50.0 %


### Get nice plots of probabilties¶

If the true energies of all states are known, we can also obtain a nice side-by-side plot of the energies and probabilites using plot_probabilities().

energies = np.sin(np.linspace(0, 10, 16))
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10,5))
plot_probabilities(probs, energies, ax=ax)


## References¶

1. J. S. Otterbach et al, Unsupervised Machine Learning on a Hybrid Quantum Computer

2. E. Farhi et al, A Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm