Augmenting QAOA Ansatz with Multiparameter Problem-Independent Layer

The quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) promises to solve classically intractable computational problems in the area of combinatorial optimization. A growing amount of evidence suggests that the originally proposed form of the QAOA ansatz is not optimal, however. To address this problem, we propose an alternative ansatz, which we call QAOA+, that augments the traditional p = 1 QAOA ansatz with an additional multiparameter problem-independent layer. The QAOA+ ansatz allows obtaining higher approximation ratios than p = 1 QAOA while keeping the circuit depth below that of p = 2 QAOA, as benchmarked on the MaxCut problem for random regular graphs. We additionally show that the proposed QAOA+ ansatz, while using a larger number of trainable classical parameters than with the standard QAOA, in most cases outperforms alternative multiangle QAOA ansfitze for fixed number of independent parameters.