{
  "abstract": "Constraint-preserving mixers keep QAOA within a feasible subspace, but feasibility and global mixer connectivity do not determine which feasible configurations are available to a particular shallow circuit. We study constrained QAOA at the level of the circuit actually executed: a specified feasible initial state, finite depth, and finite schedule of mixer interactions. We define the finite-depth accessible set $R_p(M,x_0)$ and show that the computational-basis support of the ideal QAOA circuit is contained within it. This gives a parameter-independent objective ceiling $f_R^\\star=\\max_{x\\in R_p}f(x)$ and a normalized reachable-quality diagnostic $Q_R$, separating accessible volume from the objective quality contained within it. We evaluate this framework using resource-matched block-local XY mixer schedules for constrained portfolio optimization and synthetic block-constrained quadratic problems. Across 207 favorable-tail CVaR QAOA configurations, $Q_R$ shows the strongest association with realized shallow-QAOA performance among the structural diagnostics considered, with Pearson and Spearman correlations of $0.7003$ and $0.8057$; the relationship remains positive under controlled and dependence-aware analyses. The distinction persists across changes in feasible initialization, portfolio size, and objective family. A compilation-only study further shows that, for the dense portfolio Hamiltonians considered here, phase-separator routing dominates the compiled two-qubit resource scale, while mixer schedules with comparable compiled two-qubit cost can exhibit markedly different finite-depth accessible quality. These results motivate objective-relevant finite-depth accessibility as a complementary diagnostic for resource-bounded constrained QAOA.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.00736",
  "author_total": 4,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Rushikesh Ubale"
    },
    {
      "name": "Gregory T. Byrd"
    },
    {
      "name": "Yasar Mulani"
    },
    {
      "name": "Sangram Deshpande"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/6th9rb7pgjff7.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.00736",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "6th9rb7pgjff7",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.00736",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "LicenseRef-arXiv-nonexclusive-1.0",
  "licence_label": "arXiv licence",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "cs.ET"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "quant-ph"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "1702|Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7216479962",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.00736",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-01",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/6th9rb7pgjff7.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:26:03Z",
      "native_id": "2610.00736",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.00736"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:quant-ph",
      "subfield": "quantum"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Beyond Feasibility: Finite-Depth Accessibility in Constrained QAOA",
  "title_text": "Beyond Feasibility: Finite-Depth Accessibility in Constrained QAOA",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:26:03Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/6th9rb7pgjff7",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}