LOTUS: Layer-ordered Temporally Unified Schedules For Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithms

Quantum Physics arXiv:2601.07851 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 9 Jan 2026] Title:LOTUS: Layer-ordered Temporally Unified Schedules For Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithms Authors:Phuong-Nam Nguyen View a PDF of the paper titled LOTUS: Layer-ordered Temporally Unified Schedules For Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithms, by Phuong-Nam Nguyen View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:In this paper, we introduce LOTUS (Layer-Ordered Temporally-Unified Schedules), which is a framework that restructures QAOA from a high-dimensional, chaotic search into a low-dimensional dynamical system. By replacing independent layer-wise angles with a Hybrid Fourier-Autoregressive (HFA) mapping, LOTUS enforces global temporal coherence while maintaining local flexibility. LOTUS consistently outperforms standard optimizers, achieving up to a $27.2\%$ improvement in expectation values over L-BFGS-B and $20.8\%$ compared with COBYLA. Besides, our proposed method drastically reduces computational costs, requiring over $90\%$ fewer iterations than methods like Powell or SLSQP. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2601.07851 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2601.07851v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.07851 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Nam Nguyen [view email] [v1] Fri, 9 Jan 2026 00:53:26 UTC (3,226 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled LOTUS: Layer-ordered Temporally Unified Schedules For Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithms, by Phuong-Nam NguyenView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-01 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)