International Association
for Cryptologic Research

The general quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) produces approximate solutions for combinatorial optimization problems. The algorithm depends on a positive integer $p$ and the quality of approximation improves as $p$ is increased. In this note, we put some questions about the general QAOA. We also find the recursive QAOA for MaxCut problem is flawed because all quantum gates involved in the algorithm are single qubit gates. No any entangling gate is used, which results in that the quantum computing power cannot be certified for the problem.