A tutorial on Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (Oct 2020). Part 1: Theory

[UPD] A new and slightly improved version of this tutorial is available here: https://youtu.be/5bSH1JIqyko Part 1 of the tutorial on Combinatorial Optimization on Quantum Computers. The slides and the Jupyter notebooks for the hands-on session can be downloaded here: https://github.com/rsln-s/IEEE_QW_2020 0:00 Intro 0:55 Part 0: Big picture considerations 7:03 Part 1: Mapping combinatorial optimization problems onto quantum computers 21:03 Part 1.1: Mapping arbitrary binary functions 28:50 Part 2: Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) 37:26 Part 2.1: Connection between QAOA and adiabatic quantum optimization 44:20 Part 2.2: Training QAOA purely classically 50:15 Conclusion