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  "path": "/abs/2605.22758v1",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-22T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://arxiv.org",
  "tags": [
    "Ralfs Āboliņš",
    "Andris Ambainis"
  ],
  "textContent": "**Authors:** Ralfs Āboliņš, Andris Ambainis\n\nWe identify a sharp interaction-degree threshold for the classical simulation of QAOA with $2$-local cost functions. At degree $3$, classical sampling from depth-$1$ QAOA with small multiplicative error would collapse the polynomial hierarchy to its third level. At degree $2$, exact classical sampling from depth-$p$ QAOA on $n$ qubits runs in time $n^{O(1)}$ whenever $p = O(\\log n)$. The hard degree-$3$ instances have trivially optimizable cost functions, so sampling hardness does not by itself imply a quantum optimization advantage.",
  "title": "A sharp interaction-degree threshold for simulating QAOA"
}