Quantum approximate optimization of non-planar graph problems on a planar superconducting processor

We demonstrate the application of the Google Sycamore superconducting qubit quantum processor to combinatorial optimization problems with the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). Like past QAOA experiments, we study performance for problems defined on the (planar) connectivity graph of our hardware; however, we also apply the QAOA to the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model and MaxCut, both high dimensional graph problems for which the...