Abstract
We develop a global variable substitution method that reduces -variable monomials in combinatorial optimization problems to equivalent instances with monomials in fewer variables. We apply this technique to -SAT and analyze the optimal quantum circuit depth needed to solve the reduced problem using the quantum approximate optimization algorithm. For benchmark -SAT problems, we find that the upper bound of the circuit depth is smaller when the problem is formulated as a product and uses the substitution method to decompose gates than when the problem is written in the linear formulation, which requires no decomposition.