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arXiv:2011.01653

Quantum annealing of Cayley-tree Ising spins at small scales

Yunheung Song, Minhyuk Kim, Hansub Hwang, Woojun Lee, Jaewook Ahn

Published Nov 3, 2020• 34 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Significant efforts are being directed towards developing a quantum annealer capable of solving combinatorial optimization problems. The challenges are Hamiltonian programming and large-scale implementations. Here we report quantum annealing demonstration of Ising Hamiltonians programmed with up to $N=22$ spins mapped on various Cayley tree graphs. Experiments are performed with a Rydberg-atom quantum simulator, in which rubidium single atoms are arranged in three dimensional space in such a way that their Rydberg atoms and blockaded strong couplings respectively represent the nodes and edges of each graph. Three different Cayley-tree graphs of $Z=3$ neighbors and of up to $S=4$ shells are constructed, and their ground-state phases and N\'{e}el's order formations are probed. In good agreement with model calculations, the anti-ferromagnetic phase in regular Cayley trees and frustrated competing ground-states in a dual-center Cayley tree are directly observed. This demonstrates the possibilities of high-dimensional qubit connection programming in quantum simulators.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.3.013286

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Significant efforts are being directed towards developing a quantum annealer capable of solving combinatorial optimization problems. The challenges are Hamiltonian programming and large-scale implementations. Here we report quantum annealing demonstration of Ising Hamiltonians programmed with up to N=22N=22N=22 spins mapped on various Cayley tree graphs. Experiments are performed with a Rydberg-atom quantum simulator, in which rubidium single atoms are arranged in three dimensional space in such a way that their Rydberg atoms and blockaded strong couplings respectively represent the nodes and edges of each graph. Three different Cayley-tree graphs of Z=3Z=3Z=3 neighbors and of up to S=4S=4S=4 shells are constructed, and their ground-state phases and N'{e}el's order formations are probed. In good agreement with model calculations, the anti-ferromagnetic phase in regular Cayley trees and frustrated competing ground-states in a dual-center Cayley tree are directly observed. This demonstrates the possibilities of high-dimensional qubit connection programming in quantum simulators.
Quantum annealing aims at solving optimization problems efficiently by preparing the ground state of an Ising spin-Hamiltonian quantum mechanically.A prerequisite of building a quantum annealer is the implementation of programmable long-range two-, three-, or multispin Ising interactions.We discuss an architecture, where the required spin interactions are implemented via two-port or in general multiport quantum Ising wires connecting the spins of interest.This quantum annealing architecture of spins connected by Ising quantum wires can be realized by exploiting the three-dimensional (3D) character of atomic platforms, including atoms in optical lattices and Rydberg tweezer arrays.The realization only requires engineering on-site terms and two-body interactions between nearest neighboring qubits.The locally coupled spin model on a 3D cubic lattice is sufficient to effectively produce arbitrary all-to-all coupled Ising Hamiltonians.We illustrate the approach for few-spin devices solving Max-Cut and prime factorization problems, and discuss the potential scaling to large atom-based systems.
A core concept in condensed matter physics is geometric frustration that leads to emergent spin phases in magnetic materials.These distinct phases, which depart from the conventional ferromagnet or the antiferromagnet, require unique computational techniques to decipher.In this study, we use the canonical Ising Shastry-Sutherland lattice to demonstrate new techniques for solving frustrated Hamiltonians using a quantum annealer of programmable superconducting qubits.This Hamiltonian can be tuned to produce a variety of intriguing ground states ranging from short-and long-range orders and fractional order parameters.We show that a large-scale finite-field quantum annealing experiment is possible on 468 logical spins of this model embedded into the quantum hardware.We determine microscopic spin configurations using an iterative quantum annealing protocol and develop mean-field boundary conditions to attenuate finitesize effects and defects.We not only recover all phases of the Shastry-Sutherland Ising model-including the well-known fractional magnetization plateau in a longitudinal field-but also predict the spin behavior at the critical points with significant ground-state degeneracy and in the presence of defects.The results lead us to establish the connection to the diffuse neutron scattering experiments by calculation of the static structure factors.
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We use superconducting qubit quantum annealing devices to determine the ground state of Ising models with algebraically decaying competing long-range interactions in the thermodynamic limit. This is enabled by a unit-cell-based optimization scheme, in which the finite optimizations on each unit cell are performed using commercial quantum annealing hardware. To demonstrate the capabilities of the approach, we choose three exemplary problems relevant for other quantum simulation platforms and material science: (i) the calculation of devil's staircases of magnetization plateaux of the long-range Ising model in a longitudinal field on the triangular lattice, motivated by atomic and molecular quantum simulators; (ii) the evaluation of the ground state of the same model on the Kagome lattice in the absence of a field, motivated by artificial spin ice metamaterials; (iii) the study of models with additional few-nearest-neighbor interactions relevant for frustrated Ising compounds with potential long-range interactions. The approach discussed in this work provides a useful and realistic application of existing quantum annealing technology, applicable across many research areas in which lattice problems with resummable long-range interactions are relevant.
There is a significant ongoing effort in realizing quantum annealing with different physical platforms. The challenge is to achieve a fully programmable quantum device featuring coherent adiabatic quantum dynamics. Here we show that combining the well-developed quantum simulation toolbox for Rydberg atoms with the recently proposed Lechner-Hauke-Zoller (LHZ) architecture allows one to build a prototype for a coherent adiabatic quantum computer with all-to-all Ising interactions and, therefore, a platform for quantum annealing. In LHZ an infinite-range spin-glass is mapped onto the low energy subspace of a spin-1/2 lattice gauge model with quasi-local four-body parity constraints. This spin model can be emulated in a natural way with Rubidium and Caesium atoms in a bipartite optical lattice involving laser-dressed Rydberg-Rydberg interactions, which are several orders of magnitude larger than the relevant decoherence rates. This makes the exploration of coherent quantum enhanced optimization protocols accessible with state-of-the-art atomic physics experiments.