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Quantum Science and Technology

Single photon coherent Ising machines for constrained optimization problems

Masahito Kumagai, Yoshitaka Inui, Edwin Ng, Satoshi Kako, Kazuhiko Komatsu, Hiroaki Kobayashi, Y. Yamamoto

Published May 28, 2025• 3 citations

Abstract

Abstract A Coherent Ising machine (CIM) is an oscillator-network-based analog computing system to circumvent the bottleneck in von Neumann digital computing architectures. The CIM consists of a network of degenerate optical parametric oscillators (DOPOs) and is designed to find a ground state or perform Boltzmann sampling for all degenerate ground states and low-energy excited states in combinatorial optimization problems. A nonlinear measurement feedback scheme, called chaotic amplitude control (CAC), has recently been proposed to correct pulse amplitude inhomogeneity and thereby faithfully map the Ising Hamiltonian to the loss landscape of the DOPO network. However, the quantum limit of the CIM-CAC performance is not fully explored yet. This work clarifies how the quantum noise squeezing and the measurement-induced state shift in repeated indirect quantum measurements improve the system performance. From the numerical simulation on the Ising model with the Zeeman terms, obtained from combinatorial clustering problems formulated as constrained optimization problems, it is revealed that the CIM-CAC operating in a single photon per pulse regime dramatically outperforms the standard CIM-CAC with a large photon number per pulse. This is because the standard CIM-CAC is often trapped in a periodic trajectory and cannot escape from there. On the other hand, the significant improvement is brought by the noise-induced amplitude jump in the single photon CIM-CAC.

DOI: 10.1088/2058-9565/addde5

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Abstract A Coherent Ising machine (CIM) is an oscillator-network-based analog computing system to circumvent the bottleneck in von Neumann digital computing architectures. The CIM consists of a network of degenerate optical parametric oscillators (DOPOs) and is designed to find a ground state or perform Boltzmann sampling for all degenerate ground states and low-energy excited states in combinatorial optimization problems. A nonlinear measurement feedback scheme, called chaotic amplitude control (CAC), has recently been proposed to correct pulse amplitude inhomogeneity and thereby faithfully map the Ising Hamiltonian to the loss landscape of the DOPO network. However, the quantum limit of the CIM-CAC performance is not fully explored yet. This work clarifies how the quantum noise squeezing and the measurement-induced state shift in repeated indirect quantum measurements improve the system performance. From the numerical simulation on the Ising model with the Zeeman terms, obtained from combinatorial clustering problems formulated as constrained optimization problems, it is revealed that the CIM-CAC operating in a single photon per pulse regime dramatically outperforms the standard CIM-CAC with a large photon number per pulse. This is because the standard CIM-CAC is often trapped in a periodic trajectory and cannot escape from there. On the other hand, the significant improvement is brought by the noise-induced amplitude jump in the single photon CIM-CAC.

As a solver for non-deterministic polynomial time (NP)-hard combinatorial optimization problems, the coherent Ising machine (CIM) is in the early stages of research, and the potential of this innovative physical system will be developed. Here, we propose a speed-up coherent Ising machine with a squeezed feedback system, which we call S-CIM. We couple squeezed feedback pulses generated by the squeezed feedback system into the degenerate optical parametric oscillator (DOPO) network. Simulations indicate that quantum inseparability of the coupled DOPO network is further enhanced during the whole optimization process, and quantum fluctuations are significantly smaller around the oscillation threshold. Computation experiments are performed on MAX-CUT problems of order between 4 and 20000. Numerical results demonstrate that S-CIM increases the optimal normalized output by 2.27% and significantly reduces the optimal computation time by 75.12%.

Recently, the coherent Ising machine (CIM) as a degenerate optical parametric oscillator (DOPO) network has been researched to solve Ising combinatorial optimization problems. We formulate a theoretical model for the CIM with discrete-time measurement feedback processes, and perform numerical simulations for the simplest network, composed of two degenerate optical parametric oscillator pulses with the antiferromagnetic mutual coupling. We evaluate the extent to which quantum coherence exists during the optimization process.

Combinatorial optimization problems are computationally hard in general, but they are ubiquitous in our modern life. A coherent Ising machine (CIM) based on a multiple-pulse degenerate optical parametric oscillator (DOPO) is an alternative approach to solve these problems by a specialized physical computing system. To evaluate its potential performance, computational experiments are performed on maximum cut (MAX-CUT) problems against traditional algorithms such as semidefinite programming relaxation of Goemans-Williamson and simulated annealing by Kirkpatrick, et al. The numerical results empirically suggest that the almost constant computation time is required to obtain the reasonably accurate solutions of MAX-CUT problems on a CIM with the number of vertices up to

2 \times 10^4

and the number of edges up to

10^8

.

The coherent Ising machine (CIM) implemented by degenerate optical parametric oscillator (DOPO) networks is a novel optical platform to accelerate computation of hard combinatorial optimization problems. Nevertheless, with the increase of the problem size, the probability of the machine being trapped by local minima increases exponentially. According to the quantum adiabatic theorem, a physical system will remain in its instantaneous ground state if the time-dependent Hamiltonian varies slowly enough. Here, we propose a method to help the machine partially avoid getting stuck in local minima by introducing quantum adiabatic evolution to the ground-state-search process of the CIM, which we call A-CIM. Numerical simulation results demonstrate that A-CIM can obtain improved solution accuracy in solving MAXCUT problems of vertices ranging from 10 to 2000 than CIM. The proposed machine that is based on quantum adiabatic theorem is expected to solve optimization problems more correctly.

Coherent Ising Machine (CIM) is a network of optical parametric oscillators that solve combinatorial optimization problems by finding the ground state of an Ising Hamiltonian. In CIMs, a problem arises when attempting to realize the Zeeman term because of the mismatch in size between interaction and Zeeman terms due to the variable amplitude of the optical parametric oscillator pulses corresponding to spins. There have been three approaches proposed so far to address this problem for CIM, including the absolute mean amplitude method, the auxiliary spin method, and the chaotic amplitude control (CAC) method. This paper focuses on the efficient implementation of Zeeman terms within the mean-field CIM model, which is a physics-inspired heuristic solver without quantum noise. With the mean-field model, computation is easier than with more physically accurate models, which makes it suitable for implementation in field programmable gate arrays and large-scale simulations. First, we examined the performance of the mean-field CIM model for realizing the Zeeman term with the CAC method, as well as their performance when compared to a more physically accurate model. Next, we compared the CAC method to other Zeeman term realization techniques on the mean-field model and a more physically accurate model. In both models, the CAC method outperformed the other methods while retaining similar performance.