This article may be too technical for most readers to understand.(January 2022) |
Quantum annealing (QA) is an optimization process for finding the global minimum of a given objective function over a given set of candidate solutions (candidate states), by a process using quantum fluctuations. Quantum annealing is used mainly for problems where the search space is discrete (combinatorial optimization problems) with many local minima; such as finding [1] the ground state of a spin glass or solving the traveling salesman problem. The term "quantum annealing" was first proposed in 1988 by B. Apolloni, N. Cesa Bianchi and D. De Falco as a quantum-inspired classical algorithm. [2] [3] It was formulated in its present form by T. Kadowaki and H. Nishimori (ja) in 1998, [4] though an imaginary-time variant without quantum coherence had been discussed by A. B. Finnila, M. A. Gomez, C. Sebenik and J. D. Doll in 1994. [5]
Quantum annealing starts from a quantum-mechanical superposition of all possible states (candidate states) with equal weights. Then the system evolves following the time-dependent Schrödinger equation, a natural quantum-mechanical evolution of physical systems. The amplitudes of all candidate states keep changing, realizing a quantum parallelism, according to the time-dependent strength of the transverse field, which causes quantum tunneling between states or essentially tunneling through peaks. If the rate of change of the transverse field is slow enough, the system stays close to the ground state of the instantaneous Hamiltonian (also see adiabatic quantum computation). [6] If the rate of change of the transverse field is accelerated, the system may leave the ground state temporarily but produce a higher likelihood of concluding in the ground state of the final problem Hamiltonian, i.e., Diabatic quantum computation. [7] [8] The transverse field is finally switched off, and the system is expected to have reached the ground state of the classical Ising model that corresponds to the solution to the original optimization problem. An experimental demonstration of the success of quantum annealing for random magnets was reported immediately after the initial theoretical proposal. [9] Quantum annealing has also been proven to provide a fast Grover oracle for the square-root speedup in solving many NP-complete problems. [10]
Quantum annealing can be compared to simulated annealing, whose "temperature" parameter plays a similar role to quantum annealing's tunneling field strength. In simulated annealing, the temperature determines the probability of moving to a state of higher "energy" from a single current state. In quantum annealing, the strength of transverse field determines the quantum-mechanical probability to change the amplitudes of all states in parallel. Analytical [11] and numerical [12] evidence suggests that quantum annealing outperforms simulated annealing under certain conditions (see Heim et al [13] and see Yan and Sinitsyn [14] for a fully solvable model of quantum annealing to arbitrary target Hamiltonian and comparison of different computation approaches).
The tunneling field is basically a kinetic energy term that does not commute with the classical potential energy part of the original glass. The whole process can be simulated in a computer using quantum Monte Carlo (or other stochastic technique), and thus obtain a heuristic algorithm for finding the ground state of the classical glass.
In the case of annealing a purely mathematical objective function, one may consider the variables in the problem to be classical degrees of freedom, and the cost functions to be the potential energy function (classical Hamiltonian). Then a suitable term consisting of non-commuting variable(s) (i.e. variables that have non-zero commutator with the variables of the original mathematical problem) has to be introduced artificially in the Hamiltonian to play the role of the tunneling field (kinetic part). Then one may carry out the simulation with the quantum Hamiltonian thus constructed (the original function + non-commuting part) just as described above. Here, there is a choice in selecting the non-commuting term and the efficiency of annealing may depend on that.
It has been demonstrated experimentally as well as theoretically, that quantum annealing can outperform thermal annealing (simulated annealing) in certain cases, especially where the potential energy (cost) landscape consists of very high but thin barriers surrounding shallow local minima. [15] Since thermal transition probabilities (proportional to , with the temperature and the Boltzmann constant) depend only on the height of the barriers, for very high barriers, it is extremely difficult for thermal fluctuations to get the system out from such local minima. However, as argued earlier in 1989 by Ray, Chakrabarti & Chakrabarti, [1] the quantum tunneling probability through the same barrier (considered in isolation) depends not only on the height of the barrier, but also on its width and is approximately given by , where is the tunneling field. [16] This additional handle through the width , in presence of quantum tunneling, can be of major help: If the barriers are thin enough (i.e. ), quantum fluctuations can surely bring the system out of the shallow local minima. For an -spin glass, the barrier height becomes of order . For constant value of one gets proportional to for the annealing time (instead of proportional to for thermal annealing), while can even become -independent for cases where decreases as . [17] [18]
It is speculated that in a quantum computer, such simulations would be much more efficient and exact than that done in a classical computer, because it can perform the tunneling directly, rather than needing to add it by hand. Moreover, it may be able to do this without the tight error controls needed to harness the quantum entanglement used in more traditional quantum algorithms. Some confirmation of this is found in exactly solvable models. [19] [20]
Timeline of ideas related to quantum annealing in Ising spin glasses:
In 2011, D-Wave Systems announced the first commercial quantum annealer on the market by the name D-Wave One and published a paper in Nature on its performance. [22] The company claims this system uses a 128 qubit processor chipset. [23] On May 25, 2011, D-Wave announced that Lockheed Martin Corporation entered into an agreement to purchase a D-Wave One system. [24] On October 28, 2011 University of Southern California's (USC) Information Sciences Institute took delivery of Lockheed's D-Wave One.
In May 2013, it was announced that a consortium of Google, NASA Ames and the non-profit Universities Space Research Association purchased an adiabatic quantum computer from D-Wave Systems with 512 qubits. [25] [26] An extensive study of its performance as quantum annealer, compared to some classical annealing algorithms, is available. [27]
In June 2014, D-Wave announced a new quantum applications ecosystem with computational finance firm 1QB Information Technologies (1QBit) and cancer research group DNA-SEQ to focus on solving real-world problems with quantum hardware. [28] As the first company dedicated to producing software applications for commercially available quantum computers, 1QBit's research and development arm has focused on D-Wave's quantum annealing processors and has demonstrated that these processors are suitable for solving real-world applications. [29]
With demonstrations of entanglement published, [30] the question of whether or not the D-Wave machine can demonstrate quantum speedup over all classical computers remains unanswered. A study published in Science in June 2014, described as "likely the most thorough and precise study that has been done on the performance of the D-Wave machine" [31] and "the fairest comparison yet", attempted to define and measure quantum speedup. Several definitions were put forward as some may be unverifiable by empirical tests, while others, though falsified, would nonetheless allow for the existence of performance advantages. The study found that the D-Wave chip "produced no quantum speedup" and did not rule out the possibility in future tests. [32] The researchers, led by Matthias Troyer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, found "no quantum speedup" across the entire range of their tests, and only inconclusive results when looking at subsets of the tests. Their work illustrated "the subtle nature of the quantum speedup question". Further work [33] has advanced understanding of these test metrics and their reliance on equilibrated systems, thereby missing any signatures of advantage due to quantum dynamics.
There are many open questions regarding quantum speedup. The ETH reference in the previous section is just for one class of benchmark problems. Potentially there may be other classes of problems where quantum speedup might occur. Researchers at Google, LANL, USC, Texas A&M, and D-Wave are working to find such problem classes. [34]
In December 2015, Google announced that the D-Wave 2X outperforms both simulated annealing and Quantum Monte Carlo by up to a factor of 100,000,000 on a set of hard optimization problems. [35]
D-Wave's architecture differs from traditional quantum computers. It is not known to be polynomially equivalent to a universal quantum computer and, in particular, cannot execute Shor's algorithm because Shor's algorithm is not a hillclimbing process.[ citation needed ] Shor's algorithm requires a universal quantum computer. During the Qubits 2021 conference held by D-Wave, it was announced [36] that the company is developing their first universal quantum computers, capable of running Shor's algorithm in addition to other gate-model algorithms such as QAOA and VQE.
"A cross-disciplinary introduction to quantum annealing-based algorithms" [37] presents an introduction to combinatorial optimization (NP-hard) problems, the general structure of quantum annealing-based algorithms and two examples of this kind of algorithms for solving instances of the max-SAT (maximum satisfiable problem) and Minimum Multicut problems, together with an overview of the quantum annealing systems manufactured by D-Wave Systems. Hybrid quantum-classic algorithms for large-scale discrete-continuous optimization problems were reported to illustrate the quantum advantage. [38] [39]
A quantum computer is a computer that exploits quantum mechanical phenomena. On small scales, physical matter exhibits properties of both particles and waves, and quantum computing leverages this behavior using specialized hardware. Classical physics cannot explain the operation of these quantum devices, and a scalable quantum computer could perform some calculations exponentially faster than any modern "classical" computer. Theoretically a large-scale quantum computer could break widely used encryption schemes and aid physicists in performing physical simulations; however, the current state of the art is largely experimental and impractical, with several obstacles to useful applications.
In quantum computing, a quantum algorithm is an algorithm that runs on a realistic model of quantum computation, the most commonly used model being the quantum circuit model of computation. A classical algorithm is a finite sequence of instructions, or a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem, where each step or instruction can be performed on a classical computer. Similarly, a quantum algorithm is a step-by-step procedure, where each of the steps can be performed on a quantum computer. Although all classical algorithms can also be performed on a quantum computer, the term quantum algorithm is generally reserved for algorithms that seem inherently quantum, or use some essential feature of quantum computation such as quantum superposition or quantum entanglement.
Bremermann's limit, named after Hans-Joachim Bremermann, is a theoretical limit on the maximum rate of computation that can be achieved in a self-contained system in the material universe. It is derived from Einstein's mass–energy equivalency and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and is c2/h ≈ 1.3563925 × 1050 bits per second per kilogram.
D-Wave Quantum Systems Inc. is a quantum computing company with locations in Palo Alto, California and Burnaby, British Columbia. D-Wave claims to be the world's first company to sell computers that exploit quantum effects in their operation. D-Wave's early customers include Lockheed Martin, the University of Southern California, Google/NASA, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The Landau–Zener formula is an analytic solution to the equations of motion governing the transition dynamics of a two-state quantum system, with a time-dependent Hamiltonian varying such that the energy separation of the two states is a linear function of time. The formula, giving the probability of a diabatic transition between the two energy states, was published separately by Lev Landau, Clarence Zener, Ernst Stueckelberg, and Ettore Majorana, in 1932.
Adiabatic quantum computation (AQC) is a form of quantum computing which relies on the adiabatic theorem to perform calculations and is closely related to quantum annealing.
Daniel Amihud Lidar is the holder of the Viterbi Professorship of Engineering at the University of Southern California, where he is a professor of electrical engineering, chemistry, physics & astronomy. He is the director and co-founder of the USC Center for Quantum Information Science & Technology (CQIST), the director of the USC-IBM Quantum Innovation Center, as well as scientific director of the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center, notable for his research on control of quantum systems and quantum information processing.
Bikas Kanta Chakrabarti (born 14 December 1952 in Kolkata is an Indian physicist. At present he is INSA Scientist at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics & Visiting Professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India.
Quantum simulators permit the study of a quantum system in a programmable fashion. In this instance, simulators are special purpose devices designed to provide insight about specific physics problems. Quantum simulators may be contrasted with generally programmable "digital" quantum computers, which would be capable of solving a wider class of quantum problems.
D-Wave Two is the second commercially available quantum computer, and the successor to the first commercially available quantum computer, D-Wave One. Both computers were developed by Canadian company D-Wave Systems. The computers are not general purpose, but rather are designed for quantum annealing. Specifically, the computers are designed to use quantum annealing to solve a single type of problem known as quadratic unconstrained binary optimization. As of 2015, it was still debated whether large-scale entanglement takes place in D-Wave Two, and whether current or future generations of D-Wave computers will have any advantage over classical computers.
The Harrow–Hassidim–Lloyd algorithm or HHL algorithm is a quantum algorithm for numerically solving a system of linear equations, designed by Aram Harrow, Avinatan Hassidim, and Seth Lloyd. The algorithm estimates the result of a scalar measurement on the solution vector to a given linear system of equations.
Quantum machine learning is the integration of quantum algorithms within machine learning programs.
The USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center (QCC) is a joint scientific research effort between Lockheed Martin Corporation and the University of Southern California (USC). The QCC is housed at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI), a computer science and engineering research unit of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and is jointly operated by ISI and Lockheed Martin.
Edward Henry Farhi is a physicist working on quantum computation as a principal scientist at Google. In 2018 he retired from his position as the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was the director of the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT from 2004 until 2016. He made contributions to particle physics, general relativity and astroparticle physics before turning to his current interest, quantum computation.
Andrew MacGregor Childs is an American computer scientist and physicist known for his work on quantum computing. He is currently a professor in the department of computer science and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies at the University of Maryland. He also co-directs the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science, a partnership between the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Quantum optimization algorithms are quantum algorithms that are used to solve optimization problems. Mathematical optimization deals with finding the best solution to a problem from a set of possible solutions. Mostly, the optimization problem is formulated as a minimization problem, where one tries to minimize an error which depends on the solution: the optimal solution has the minimal error. Different optimization techniques are applied in various fields such as mechanics, economics and engineering, and as the complexity and amount of data involved rise, more efficient ways of solving optimization problems are needed. Quantum computing may allow problems which are not practically feasible on classical computers to be solved, or suggest a considerable speed up with respect to the best known classical algorithm.
Hamiltonian simulation is a problem in quantum information science that attempts to find the computational complexity and quantum algorithms needed for simulating quantum systems. Hamiltonian simulation is a problem that demands algorithms which implement the evolution of a quantum state efficiently. The Hamiltonian simulation problem was proposed by Richard Feynman in 1982, where he proposed a quantum computer as a possible solution since the simulation of general Hamiltonians seem to grow exponentially with respect to the system size.
Exact diagonalization (ED) is a numerical technique used in physics to determine the eigenstates and energy eigenvalues of a quantum Hamiltonian. In this technique, a Hamiltonian for a discrete, finite system is expressed in matrix form and diagonalized using a computer. Exact diagonalization is only feasible for systems with a few tens of particles, due to the exponential growth of the Hilbert space dimension with the size of the quantum system. It is frequently employed to study lattice models, including the Hubbard model, Ising model, Heisenberg model, t-J model, and SYK model.
This glossary of quantum computing is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in quantum computing, its sub-disciplines, and related fields.
Quantum computational chemistry is an emerging field that exploits quantum computing to simulate chemical systems. Despite quantum mechanics' foundational role in understanding chemical behaviors, traditional computational approaches face significant challenges, largely due to the complexity and computational intensity of quantum mechanical equations. This complexity arises from the exponential growth of a quantum system's wave function with each added particle, making exact simulations on classical computers inefficient.