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arXiv:1901.07787 · Italian Quantum Information Science Conference (IQIS)

May a Dissipative Environment Be Beneficial for Quantum Annealing?

Gianluca Passarelli, G. De Filippis, V. Cataudella, Procolo Lucignano

Published Jul 9, 2019• 0 citations
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Abstract

We discuss the quantum annealing of the fully-connected ferromagnetic p-spin model in a dissipative environment at low temperature. This model, in the large p limit, encodes in its ground state the solution to the Grover’s problem of searching in unsorted databases. In the framework of the quantum circuit model, a quantum algorithm is known for this task, providing a quadratic speed-up with respect to its best classical counterpart. This improvement is not recovered in adiabatic quantum computation for an isolated quantum processor. We analyze the same problem in the presence of a low-temperature reservoir, using a Markovian quantum master equation in Lindblad form, and we show that a thermal enhancement is achieved in the presence of a zero temperature environment moderately coupled to the quantum annealer.

DOI
10.3390/proceedings2019012026

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We discuss the quantum annealing of the fully-connected ferromagnetic p-spin model in a dissipative environment at low temperature. This model, in the large p limit, encodes in its ground state the solution to the Grover’s problem of searching in unsorted databases. In the framework of the quantum circuit model, a quantum algorithm is known for this task, providing a quadratic speed-up with respect to its best classical counterpart. This improvement is not recovered in adiabatic quantum computation for an isolated quantum processor. We analyze the same problem in the presence of a low-temperature reservoir, using a Markovian quantum master equation in Lindblad form, and we show that a thermal enhancement is achieved in the presence of a zero temperature environment moderately coupled to the quantum annealer.
We investigate the quantum annealing of the ferromagnetic ppp-spin model in a dissipative environment (p=5p=5p=5 and p=7p=7p=7). This model, in the large-ppp limit, codifies Grover's algorithm for searching in an unsorted database [L. K. Grover, Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (ACM, New York, 1996), pp. 212--219]. The dissipative environment is described by a phonon bath in thermal equilibrium at finite temperature. The dynamics is studied in the framework of a Lindblad master equation for the reduced density matrix describing only the spins. Exploiting the symmetries of our model Hamiltonian, we can describe many spins and extrapolate expected trends for large NNN and ppp. While at weak system-bath coupling the dissipative environment has detrimental effects on the annealing results, we show that in the intermediate-coupling regime, the phonon bath seems to speed up the annealing at low temperatures. This improvement in the performance is likely not due to thermal fluctuation but rather arises from a correlated spin-bath state and persists even at zero temperature. This result may pave the way to a new scenario in which, by appropriately engineering the system-bath coupling, one may optimize quantum annealing performances below either the purely quantum or the classical limit.
We compare the performance of quantum annealing (QA, through Schr\"odinger dynamics) and simulated annealing (SA, through a classical master equation) on the ppp-spin infinite range ferromagnetic Ising model, by slowly driving the system across its equilibrium, quantum or classical, phase transition. When the phase transition is second order (p=2p=2p=2, the familiar two-spin Ising interaction) SA shows a remarkable exponential speed-up over QA. For a first-order phase transition ($p\ensuremath{\ge}3$, i.e., with multispin Ising interactions), in contrast, the classical annealing dynamics appears to remain stuck in the disordered phase, while we have clear evidence that QA shows a residual energy which decreases towards zero when the total annealing time $\ensuremath{\tau}$ increases, albeit in a rather slow (logarithmic) fashion. This is one of the rare examples where a limited quantum speedup, a speedup by QA over SA, has been shown to exist by direct solutions of the Schr\"odinger and master equations in combination with a nonequilibrium Landau-Zener analysis. We also analyze the imaginary-time QA dynamics of the model, finding a $1/{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{2}$ behavior for all finite values of ppp, as predicted by the adiabatic theorem of quantum mechanics. The Grover-search limit $p(\mathrm{odd})=\ensuremath{\infty}$ is also discussed.
We propose a non-Hermitian quantum annealing algorithm which can be useful for solving complex optimization problems. We demonstrate our approach on Grover's problem [L. K. Grover, Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 325 (1997)] of finding a marked item inside of an unsorted database. We show that the energy gap between the ground and excited states depends on the relaxation parameters and is not exponentially small. This allows a significant reduction of the searching time, which is proportional to the number of qubits. We discuss the relations between the probabilities of finding the ground state and the survival of a quantum computer in a dissipative environment, and we discuss alternate ways to solve NPNPNP-complete problems.
Adiabatic reverse annealing (ARA) is an improvement to conventional quantum annealing (QA) that uses an initial guess at the desired ground state to circumvent problematic phase transitions. Despite encouraging results in the closed-system setting, Ref. [1] has suggested on the basis of numerical simulations that ARA may lose its advantage in the presence of decoherence. Here, we revisit this problem from a more analytical perspective. Using the ppp-spin model as a solvable example, together with the adiabatic master equation to describe the effects of the environment (valid at weak coupling), we show that ARA can in fact succeed in open systems but that the temperature of the environment plays a key role. We first demonstrate that, in the adiabatic limit, the system will follow the instantaneous equilibrium state as long as the protocol does not pass through any (finite-temperature) phase transitions. Given this, there are two distinct mechanisms by which ARA can break down at high temperature: either there are no paths that avoid transitions, or the equilibrium state itself is disordered. When the temperature is sufficiently low that neither of these occur, then ARA succeeds. Remarkably, there are even situations in which the environment benefits ARA: we find parameter values for which no transition-avoiding paths exist at zero temperature but such paths appear at non-zero temperature.
Following experimental work [Nature, 473, 194 (2011)10.1038/nature10012], we propose a new physical scheme for perfect implementation of a quantum search algorithm in the presence of qubits dissipation. It is shown that the Grover algorithm is obtained as a special case of the suggested quantum search algorithm. We have generated the quantum gates to realize the required steps for implementing the algorithm. Experimental evidence has been discussed in which, during a critical portion of quantum annealing, the qubits become entangled, and entanglement persists even as these systems reach equilibrium with a thermal environment. Our results provide an encouraging sign that quantum annealing is a viable technology for large-scale quantum computing. It is shown that the protocol can be successfully implemented within the present experimental limits.
We revisit here the issue of thermally assisted Quantum Annealing by a detailed study of the dissipative Landau-Zener problem in the presence of a Caldeira-Leggett bath of harmonic oscillators, using both a weak-coupling quantum master equation and a quasiadiabatic path-integral approach. Building on the known zero-temperature exact results [Wubs et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 200404 (2006)], we show that a finite temperature bath can have a beneficial effect on the ground-state probability only if it couples also to a spin direction that is transverse with respect to the driving field, while no improvement is obtained for the more commonly studied purely longitudinal coupling. In particular, we also highlight that, for a transverse coupling, raising the bath temperature further improves the ground-state probability in the fast-driving regime. We discuss the relevance of these findings for the current quantum-annealing flux qubit chips.