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

Transitionless quantum annealing in a dissipative environment

Gianluca Passarelli, Rosario Fazio, Procolo Lucignano

Published Sep 27, 2021• 1 citation
OpenAlex

Abstract

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 Letter, 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.

Related papers

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

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

Exploring ground states of Fermi-Hubbard model on honeycomb lattices with counterdiabaticity

Jialiang Tang, Ruoqian Xu, Yongcheng Ding +6 more

Exploring the ground state properties of many-body quantum systems conventionally involves adiabatic processes, alongside exact diagonalization, in the context of quantum annealing or adiabatic quantum computation. Shortcuts to adiabaticity by counter-diabatic driving serve to accelerate these processes by suppressing energy excitations. Motivated by this, we develop variational quantum algorithms incorporating the auxiliary counter-diabatic interactions, comparing them with digitized adiabatic algorithms. These algorithms are then implemented on gate-based quantum circuits to explore the ground states of the Fermi-Hubbard model on honeycomb lattices, utilizing systems with up to 26 qubits. The comparison reveals that the counter-diabatic inspired ansatz is superior to traditional Hamiltonian variational ansatz. Furthermore, the number and duration of Trotter steps are analyzed to understand and mitigate errors. Given the model’s relevance to materials in condensed matter, our study paves the way for using variational quantum algorithms with counterdiabaticity to explore quantum materials in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era.

arXiv:2405.09225•npj Quantum Materials•Nov 7, 2024•5 citations

Diabatic quantum annealing for the frustrated ring model

Jeremy Côté, Frédéric Sauvage, Martín Larocca +3 more

Abstract Quantum annealing (QA) is a continuous-time heuristic quantum algorithm for solving or approximately solving classical optimization problems. The algorithm uses a schedule to interpolate between a driver Hamiltonian with an easy-to-prepare ground state and a problem Hamiltonian whose ground state encodes solutions to an optimization problem. The standard implementation relies on the evolution being adiabatic: keeping the system in the instantaneous ground state with high probability and requiring a time scale inversely related to the minimum energy gap between the instantaneous ground and excited states. However, adiabatic evolution can lead to evolution times that scale exponentially with the system size, even for computationally simple problems. Here, we study whether non-adiabatic evolutions with optimized annealing schedules can bypass this exponential slowdown for one such class of problems called the frustrated ring model. For sufficiently optimized annealing schedules and system sizes of up to 39 qubits, we provide numerical evidence that we can avoid the exponential slowdown. Our work highlights the potential of highly-controllable QA to circumvent bottlenecks associated with the standard implementation of QA.

arXiv:2212.02624•Quantum Science and Technology•Sep 20, 2023•14 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

Optimizing counterdiabaticity by variational quantum circuits

Dan Sun, Pranav Chandarana, Zi‐Hua Xin +1 more

Using counterdiabatic (CD) driving-aiming at suppression of diabatic transition-in digitized adiabatic evolution has garnered immense interest in quantum protocols and algorithms. However, improving the approximate CD terms with a nested commutator ansatz is a challenging task. In this work, we propose a technique of finding optimal coefficients of the CD terms using a variational quantum circuit. By classical optimization routines, the parameters of this circuit are optimized to provide the coefficients corresponding to the CD terms. Then their improved performance is exemplified in Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state preparation on the nearest-neighbour Ising model. Finally, we also show the advantage over the usual quantum approximation optimization algorithm, in terms of fidelity with bounded time. This article is part of the theme issue 'Shortcuts to adiabaticity: theoretical, experimental and interdisciplinary perspectives'.

arXiv:2208.02087•Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences•Nov 6, 2022•16 citations
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 Letter, 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.
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.
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.
Exploring the ground state properties of many-body quantum systems conventionally involves adiabatic processes, alongside exact diagonalization, in the context of quantum annealing or adiabatic quantum computation. Shortcuts to adiabaticity by counter-diabatic driving serve to accelerate these processes by suppressing energy excitations. Motivated by this, we develop variational quantum algorithms incorporating the auxiliary counter-diabatic interactions, comparing them with digitized adiabatic algorithms. These algorithms are then implemented on gate-based quantum circuits to explore the ground states of the Fermi-Hubbard model on honeycomb lattices, utilizing systems with up to 26 qubits. The comparison reveals that the counter-diabatic inspired ansatz is superior to traditional Hamiltonian variational ansatz. Furthermore, the number and duration of Trotter steps are analyzed to understand and mitigate errors. Given the model’s relevance to materials in condensed matter, our study paves the way for using variational quantum algorithms with counterdiabaticity to explore quantum materials in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era.
Abstract Quantum annealing (QA) is a continuous-time heuristic quantum algorithm for solving or approximately solving classical optimization problems. The algorithm uses a schedule to interpolate between a driver Hamiltonian with an easy-to-prepare ground state and a problem Hamiltonian whose ground state encodes solutions to an optimization problem. The standard implementation relies on the evolution being adiabatic: keeping the system in the instantaneous ground state with high probability and requiring a time scale inversely related to the minimum energy gap between the instantaneous ground and excited states. However, adiabatic evolution can lead to evolution times that scale exponentially with the system size, even for computationally simple problems. Here, we study whether non-adiabatic evolutions with optimized annealing schedules can bypass this exponential slowdown for one such class of problems called the frustrated ring model. For sufficiently optimized annealing schedules and system sizes of up to 39 qubits, we provide numerical evidence that we can avoid the exponential slowdown. Our work highlights the potential of highly-controllable QA to circumvent bottlenecks associated with the standard implementation of QA.
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.
Using counterdiabatic (CD) driving-aiming at suppression of diabatic transition-in digitized adiabatic evolution has garnered immense interest in quantum protocols and algorithms. However, improving the approximate CD terms with a nested commutator ansatz is a challenging task. In this work, we propose a technique of finding optimal coefficients of the CD terms using a variational quantum circuit. By classical optimization routines, the parameters of this circuit are optimized to provide the coefficients corresponding to the CD terms. Then their improved performance is exemplified in Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state preparation on the nearest-neighbour Ising model. Finally, we also show the advantage over the usual quantum approximation optimization algorithm, in terms of fidelity with bounded time. This article is part of the theme issue 'Shortcuts to adiabaticity: theoretical, experimental and interdisciplinary perspectives'.