Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:1912.09711 · Physical Review Research

Counterdiabatic driving in the quantum annealing of the p -spin model: A variational approach

G. Passarelli, V. Cataudella, Rosario Fazio, Procolo Lucignano

Published Mar 9, 2020• 65 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In this paper, the issue of reducing the time-to-solution in adiabatic quantum computation is addressed. The authors apply a variational principle to derive approximations of the counterdiabatic driving operator as a shortcut to adiabaticity. Two different ansatzes are discussed for the ferromagnetic $p$-spin model and its generalizations, including short-range interactions and random couplings. Numerical simulations show good performances, almost independently of the system size, up to hundreds of qubits

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.2.013283

Related papers

Shortcuts to Adiabaticity in Digitized Adiabatic Quantum Computing

Narendra N. Hegade, Koushik Paul, Yongcheng Ding +4 more

Shortcuts to adiabaticity are well-known methods for controlling the quantum dynamics beyond the adiabatic criteria, where counterdiabatic (CD) driving provides a promising means to speed up quantum many-body systems. In this work, we show the applicability of CD driving to enhance the digitized adiabatic quantum computing paradigm in terms of fidelity and total simulation time. We study the state evolution of an Ising spin chain using the digitized version of the standard CD driving and its variants derived from the variational approach. We apply this technique in the preparation of Bell and Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states with high fidelity using a very shallow quantum circuit. We implement this proposal on the IBM quantum computer, proving its usefulness for the speed up of adiabatic quantum computing in noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices.

arXiv:2009.03539•Physical Review Applied•Feb 16, 2021•132 citations

Optimal quantum annealing: A variational shortcut-to-adiabaticity approach

Gianluca Passarelli, Rosario Fazio, Procolo Lucignano

Suppressing unwanted transitions out of the instantaneous ground state is a major challenge in unitary adiabatic quantum computation. A recent approach consists in building counterdiabatic potentials approximated using variational strategies. In this contribution, we extend this variational approach to Lindbladian dynamics, having as a goal the suppression of diabatic transitions between pairs of Jordan blocks in quantum annealing. We show that, surprisingly, unitary counterdiabatic Ans\"atze are successful for dissipative dynamics as well, allowing for easier experimental implementations compared to Lindbladian Ans\"atze involving dissipation. Our approach not only guarantees improvements of open-system adiabaticity but also enhances the success probability of quantum annealing.

arXiv:2109.13043•Physical Review A•Feb 23, 2022•29 citations

Geometrical scheduling of adiabatic control without information of energy spectra

Yuta Shingu, Takuya Hatomura

Adiabatic control is a fundamental technique for manipulating quantum systems, guided by the quantum adiabatic theorem, which ensures suppressed nonadiabatic transitions under slow parameter variations. Quantum annealing, a heuristic algorithm leveraging adiabatic control, seeks the ground states of Ising spin glass models and has drawn attention for addressing combinatorial optimization problems. However, exponentially small energy gaps in such models often necessitate impractically long runtime to satisfy the adiabatic condition. Despite this limitation, improving the quality of approximate solutions remains crucial for practical applications. The quantum adiabatic brachistochrone provides a method to enhance adiabaticity by minimizing an action representing nonadiabaticity via the variational principle. While effective, its implementation requires detailed energy spectra, complicating its use in quantum annealing. Shortcuts to adiabaticity by counterdiabatic driving offer alternative approaches for accelerating adiabatic processes. However, the theory of shortcuts to adiabaticity often faces challenges such as nonlocal control requirements, high computational cost, and trade-offs between speed and energy efficiency. In this work, we propose a novel quantum adiabatic brachistochrone protocol tailored for quantum annealing that eliminates the need for energy spectrum information. Our approach builds on advancements in counterdiabatic driving to design efficient parameter schedules. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method through numerical simulations on the transverse-field Ising chain and axial next-nearest neighbor Ising models.

arXiv:2501.11846•Physical Review A•Jul 16, 2025•3 citations

Rotated ansatz for approximate counterdiabatic driving

Glen Bigan Mbeng, Wolfgang Lechner

Approximate counterdiabatic (CD) protocols are a powerful tool to enhance quantum adiabatic processes that allow to reliably manipulate quantum systems on short time scales. However, implementing CD protocols entails the introduction of additional control fields in the Hamiltonian, often associated with highly non-local multi-body interactions. Here, we introduce a novel variational rotated ansatz (RA) to systematically generate experimentally accessible approximate CD protocols. We numerically benchmark our approach on state preparation and adiabatic quantum computing algorithms, and find that using RA protocols significantly enhances their performances.

arXiv:2207.03553•Jul 7, 2022•1 citation

Counterdiabatic Optimised Local Driving

Ieva Čepaitė, Anatoli Polkovnikov, Andrew J. Daley +1 more

Adiabatic protocols are employed across a variety of quantum technologies, from implementing state preparation and individual operations that are building blocks of larger devices, to higher-level protocols in quantum annealing and adiabatic quantum computation. The problem of speeding up these processes has garnered a large amount of interest, resulting in a menagerie of approaches, most notably quantum optimal control and shortcuts to adiabaticity. The two approaches are complementary: optimal control manipulates control fields to steer the dynamics in the minimum allowed time while shortcuts to adiabaticity aim to retain the adiabatic condition upon speed-up. We outline a new method which combines the two methodologies and takes advantage of the strengths of each. The new technique improves upon approximate local counterdiabatic driving with the addition of time-dependent control fields. We refer to this new method as counterdiabatic optimised local driving (COLD) and we show that it can result in a substantial improvement when applied to annealing protocols, state preparation schemes, entanglement generation and population transfer on a lattice. We also demonstrate a new approach to the optimisation of control fields which does not require access to the wavefunction or the computation of system dynamics. COLD can be enhanced with existing advanced optimal control methods and we explore this using the chopped randomised basis method and gradient ascent pulse engineering.

arXiv:2203.01948•Mar 3, 2022•5 citations

Minimizing irreversible losses in quantum systems by local counterdiabatic driving

Dries Sels, Anatoli Polkovnikov

42:365303] as a means to make fast changes in the Hamiltonian without exciting transitions. Such driving in principle allows one to realize arbitrarily fast annealing protocols or implement fast dissipationless driving, circumventing standard adiabatic limitations requiring infinitesimally slow rates. These ideas were tested and used both experimentally and theoretically in small systems, but in larger chaotic systems, it is known that exact counterdiabatic protocols do not exist. In this work, we develop a simple variational approach allowing one to find the best possible counterdiabatic protocols given physical constraints, like locality. These protocols are easy to derive and implement both experimentally and numerically. We show that, using these approximate protocols, one can drastically suppress heating and increase fidelity of quantum annealing protocols in complex many-particle systems. In the fast limit, these protocols provide an effective dual description of adiabatic dynamics, where the coupling constant plays the role of time and the counterdiabatic term plays the role of the Hamiltonian.

arXiv:1607.05687•Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences•May 1, 2017•269 citations
In this paper, the issue of reducing the time-to-solution in adiabatic quantum computation is addressed. The authors apply a variational principle to derive approximations of the counterdiabatic driving operator as a shortcut to adiabaticity. Two different ansatzes are discussed for the ferromagnetic ppp-spin model and its generalizations, including short-range interactions and random couplings. Numerical simulations show good performances, almost independently of the system size, up to hundreds of qubits
Shortcuts to adiabaticity are well-known methods for controlling the quantum dynamics beyond the adiabatic criteria, where counterdiabatic (CD) driving provides a promising means to speed up quantum many-body systems. In this work, we show the applicability of CD driving to enhance the digitized adiabatic quantum computing paradigm in terms of fidelity and total simulation time. We study the state evolution of an Ising spin chain using the digitized version of the standard CD driving and its variants derived from the variational approach. We apply this technique in the preparation of Bell and Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states with high fidelity using a very shallow quantum circuit. We implement this proposal on the IBM quantum computer, proving its usefulness for the speed up of adiabatic quantum computing in noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices.
Suppressing unwanted transitions out of the instantaneous ground state is a major challenge in unitary adiabatic quantum computation. A recent approach consists in building counterdiabatic potentials approximated using variational strategies. In this contribution, we extend this variational approach to Lindbladian dynamics, having as a goal the suppression of diabatic transitions between pairs of Jordan blocks in quantum annealing. We show that, surprisingly, unitary counterdiabatic Ans\"atze are successful for dissipative dynamics as well, allowing for easier experimental implementations compared to Lindbladian Ans\"atze involving dissipation. Our approach not only guarantees improvements of open-system adiabaticity but also enhances the success probability of quantum annealing.
Adiabatic control is a fundamental technique for manipulating quantum systems, guided by the quantum adiabatic theorem, which ensures suppressed nonadiabatic transitions under slow parameter variations. Quantum annealing, a heuristic algorithm leveraging adiabatic control, seeks the ground states of Ising spin glass models and has drawn attention for addressing combinatorial optimization problems. However, exponentially small energy gaps in such models often necessitate impractically long runtime to satisfy the adiabatic condition. Despite this limitation, improving the quality of approximate solutions remains crucial for practical applications. The quantum adiabatic brachistochrone provides a method to enhance adiabaticity by minimizing an action representing nonadiabaticity via the variational principle. While effective, its implementation requires detailed energy spectra, complicating its use in quantum annealing. Shortcuts to adiabaticity by counterdiabatic driving offer alternative approaches for accelerating adiabatic processes. However, the theory of shortcuts to adiabaticity often faces challenges such as nonlocal control requirements, high computational cost, and trade-offs between speed and energy efficiency. In this work, we propose a novel quantum adiabatic brachistochrone protocol tailored for quantum annealing that eliminates the need for energy spectrum information. Our approach builds on advancements in counterdiabatic driving to design efficient parameter schedules. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method through numerical simulations on the transverse-field Ising chain and axial next-nearest neighbor Ising models.
Approximate counterdiabatic (CD) protocols are a powerful tool to enhance quantum adiabatic processes that allow to reliably manipulate quantum systems on short time scales. However, implementing CD protocols entails the introduction of additional control fields in the Hamiltonian, often associated with highly non-local multi-body interactions. Here, we introduce a novel variational rotated ansatz (RA) to systematically generate experimentally accessible approximate CD protocols. We numerically benchmark our approach on state preparation and adiabatic quantum computing algorithms, and find that using RA protocols significantly enhances their performances.
Adiabatic protocols are employed across a variety of quantum technologies, from implementing state preparation and individual operations that are building blocks of larger devices, to higher-level protocols in quantum annealing and adiabatic quantum computation. The problem of speeding up these processes has garnered a large amount of interest, resulting in a menagerie of approaches, most notably quantum optimal control and shortcuts to adiabaticity. The two approaches are complementary: optimal control manipulates control fields to steer the dynamics in the minimum allowed time while shortcuts to adiabaticity aim to retain the adiabatic condition upon speed-up. We outline a new method which combines the two methodologies and takes advantage of the strengths of each. The new technique improves upon approximate local counterdiabatic driving with the addition of time-dependent control fields. We refer to this new method as counterdiabatic optimised local driving (COLD) and we show that it can result in a substantial improvement when applied to annealing protocols, state preparation schemes, entanglement generation and population transfer on a lattice. We also demonstrate a new approach to the optimisation of control fields which does not require access to the wavefunction or the computation of system dynamics. COLD can be enhanced with existing advanced optimal control methods and we explore this using the chopped randomised basis method and gradient ascent pulse engineering.
42:365303] as a means to make fast changes in the Hamiltonian without exciting transitions. Such driving in principle allows one to realize arbitrarily fast annealing protocols or implement fast dissipationless driving, circumventing standard adiabatic limitations requiring infinitesimally slow rates. These ideas were tested and used both experimentally and theoretically in small systems, but in larger chaotic systems, it is known that exact counterdiabatic protocols do not exist. In this work, we develop a simple variational approach allowing one to find the best possible counterdiabatic protocols given physical constraints, like locality. These protocols are easy to derive and implement both experimentally and numerically. We show that, using these approximate protocols, one can drastically suppress heating and increase fidelity of quantum annealing protocols in complex many-particle systems. In the fast limit, these protocols provide an effective dual description of adiabatic dynamics, where the coupling constant plays the role of time and the counterdiabatic term plays the role of the Hamiltonian.