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arXiv:quant-ph/0507010 · Physical Review A

Quantum adiabatic search with decoherence in the instantaneous energy eigenbasis

Johan Åberg, David Kult, Erik Sjöqvist

Published Oct 18, 2005• 36 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In Phys. Rev. A 71, 060312(R) (2005), the robustness of the local adiabatic quantum search to decoherence in the instantaneous eigenbasis of the search Hamiltonian was examined. We expand this analysis to include the case of the global adiabatic quantum search. As in the case of the local search the asymptotic time complexity for the global search is the same as for the ideal closed case, as long as the Hamiltonian dynamics is present. In the case of pure decoherence, where the environment monitors the search Hamiltonian, we find that the time complexity of the global quantum adiabatic search scales like ${N}^{3∕2}$, where $N$ is the list length. We moreover extend the analysis to include success probabilities $p<1$ and prove bounds on the run time with the same scaling as in the conditions for the $p\ensuremath{\rightarrow}1$ limit. We supplement the analytical results by numerical simulations of the global and local search.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.72.042317

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In Phys. Rev. A 71, 060312(R) (2005), the robustness of the local adiabatic quantum search to decoherence in the instantaneous eigenbasis of the search Hamiltonian was examined. We expand this analysis to include the case of the global adiabatic quantum search. As in the case of the local search the asymptotic time complexity for the global search is the same as for the ideal closed case, as long as the Hamiltonian dynamics is present. In the case of pure decoherence, where the environment monitors the search Hamiltonian, we find that the time complexity of the global quantum adiabatic search scales like N3∕2{N}^{3∕2}N3∕2, where NNN is the list length. We moreover extend the analysis to include success probabilities p<1p<1p<1 and prove bounds on the run time with the same scaling as in the conditions for the p\ensuremath→1p\ensuremath{\rightarrow}1p\ensuremath→1 limit. We supplement the analytical results by numerical simulations of the global and local search.
The adiabatic theorem has been recently used to design quantum algorithms of a new kind, where the quantum computer evolves slowly enough so that it remains near its instantaneous ground state, which tends to the solution. We apply this time-dependent Hamiltonian approach to Grover's problem, i.e., searching a marked item in an unstructured database. We find that by adjusting the evolution rate of the Hamiltonian so as to keep the evolution adiabatic on each infinitesimal time interval, the total running time is of order N,\sqrt{N},N​, where N is the number of items in the database. We thus recover the advantage of Grover's standard algorithm as compared to a classical search, scaling as N. This is in contrast with the constant-rate adiabatic approach of Farhi et al. (e-print quant-ph/0001106), where the requirement of adiabaticity is expressed only globally, resulting in a time of order N.
Recent experiments with increasingly larger numbers of qubits have sparked renewed interest in adiabatic quantum computation, and in particular quantum annealing. A central question that is repeatedly asked is whether quantum features of the evolution can survive over the long time scales used for quantum annealing relative to standard measures of the decoherence time. We reconsider the role of decoherence in adiabatic quantum computation and quantum annealing using the adiabatic quantum master-equation formalism. We restrict ourselves to the weak-coupling and singular-coupling limits, which correspond to decoherence in the energy eigenbasis and in the computational basis, respectively. We demonstrate that decoherence in the instantaneous energy eigenbasis does not necessarily detrimentally affect adiabatic quantum computation, and in particular that a short single-qubit T2{T}_{2}T2​ time need not imply adverse consequences for the success of the quantum adiabatic algorithm. We further demonstrate that boundary cancellation methods, designed to improve the fidelity of adiabatic quantum computing in the closed-system setting, remain beneficial in the open-system setting. To address the high computational cost of master-equation simulations, we also demonstrate that a quantum Monte Carlo algorithm that explicitly accounts for a thermal bosonic bath can be used to interpolate between classical and quantum annealing. Our study highlights and clarifies the significantly different role played by decoherence in the adiabatic and circuit models of quantum computing.
Adiabatic quantum algorithms must evolve slowly enough to suppress non-adiabatic transitions while remaining fast enough to be practical. In open systems, this trade-off is reshaped by decoherence. For Hamiltonians subject to dephasing Lindbladians, Avron et al. [Phys. Rev. A 82, 040304(R) (2010)] showed that a unique timetable exists that maximizes the fidelity with a target state. This optimal schedule is characterized by a constant tunneling rate along the adiabatic path. In this work, we revisit their analysis and apply it to the adiabatic Grover search framework, obtaining closed-form expressions for the optimal evolution schedule, the minimum runtime, and the resulting achievable fidelity. Moreover, by invoking an energy-time uncertainty argument, we identify a critical dephasing threshold beyond which further noise-assisted acceleration is prohibited, showing that the apparent advantage of strong dephasing is a Zeno-type stabilization mechanism rather than a conventional algorithmic speedup over unitary Grover search.
Recently, Zhang and Lu provided a quantum search algorithm based on partial adiabatic evolution, which beats the time bound of local adiabatic search when the number of marked items in the unsorted database is larger than one. Later, they found that the above two adiabatic search algorithms had the same time complexity when there is only one marked item in the database. In the present paper, following the idea of Roland and Cerf [Roland J and Cerf N J 2002 Phys. Rev. A 65 042308 ], if within the small symmetric evolution interval defined by Zhang et al., a local adiabatic evolution is performed instead of the original "global" one, this "new" algorithm exhibits slightly better performance, although they are progressively equivalent with M increasing. In addition, the proof of the optimality for this partial evolution based local adiabatic search when M = 1 is also presented. Two other special cases of the adiabatic algorithm obtained by appropriately tuning the evolution interval of partial adiabatic evolution based quantum search, which are found to have the same phenomenon above, are also discussed.