Quantum processing units (QPUs) executing annealing algorithms have shown promise in optimization and simulation applications. Hybrid algorithms are a natural bridge to additional applications of larger scale. We present a straightforward and effective method for solving larger-than-QPU lattice-structured Ising optimization problems. Performance is compared against simulated annealing with promising results, and improvement is shown as a function of the generation of D-Wave QPU used.
A recent Google study [Phys. Rev. X, 6:031015 (2016)] compared a D-Wave 2X quantum processing unit (QPU) to two classical Monte Carlo algorithms: simulated annealing (SA) and quantum Monte Carlo (QMC). The study showed the D-Wave 2X to be up to 100 million times faster than the classical algorithms. The Google inputs are designed to demonstrate the value of collective multiqubit tunneling, a resource available to D-Wave QPUs but not to simulated annealing. But the computational hardness in these inputs is highly localized in gadgets, with only a small amount of complexity coming from global in…
Quantum algorithm design usually assumes access to a perfect quantum computer with ideal properties like full connectivity, noise-freedom and arbitrarily long coherence time. In Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices, however, the number of qubits is highly limited and quantum operation error and qubit coherence are not negligible. Besides, the connectivity of physical qubits in a quantum processing unit (QPU) is also strictly constrained. Thereby, additional operations like SWAP gates have to be inserted to satisfy this constraint while preserving the functionality of the original ci…
Quantum annealing algorithms belong to the class of meta-heuristic tools, applicable for solving binary optimization problems. Hardware implementations of quantum annealing, such as the quantum processing units (QPUs) produced by D-Wave Systems, have been subject to multiple analyses in research, with the aim of characterizing the technology's usefulness for optimization and sampling tasks. In this paper, we present a real-world application that uses quantum technologies. Specifically, we show how to map certain parts of the real-world traffic flow optimization problem to be suitable for quant…
This paper presents the details and testing of two implementations (in C++ and Python) of the hybrid quantum-classical algorithm Quantum Annealing Learning Search (QALS) on a D-Wave quantum annealer. QALS was proposed in 2019 as a novel technique to solve general QUBO problems that cannot be directly represented into the hardware architecture of a D-Wave machine. Repeated calls to the quantum machine within a classical iterative structure and a related convergence proof originate a learning mechanism to find an encoding of a given problem into the quantum architecture. The present work conside…
We present an algorithm for quantum-assisted cluster analysis (QACA) that makes use of the topological properties of a D-Wave 2000Q quantum processing unit (QPU). Clustering is a form of unsupervised machine learning, where instances are organized into groups whose members share similarities. The assignments are, in contrast to classification, not known a priori, but generated by the algorithm. We explain how the problem can be expressed as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem, and show that the introduced quantum-assisted clustering algorithm is, regarding accuracy, eq…
Quantum annealing algorithms belong to the class of metaheuristic tools, applicable for solving binary optimization problems. Hardware implementations of quantum annealing, such as the quantum annealing machines produced by D-Wave Systems, have been subject to multiple analyses in research, with the aim of characterizing the technology's usefulness for optimization and sampling tasks. Here, we present a way to partially embed both Monte Carlo policy iteration for finding an optimal policy on random observations, as well as how to embed (n) sub-optimal state-value functions for approximating an…
The quantum approximate optimisation algorithm (QAOA) was partially inspired by digitising quantum annealing. Based on this inspiration, we develop techniques to use the additional flexibility of a universal gate-model quantum computer to mitigate fluctuation effects which are known to distort the search space within quantum annealing and lead to false minima. We find that even just the added ability to take Pauli X measurements allows us to modify the mixer angles to counteract these effects by scaling mixer terms in a way proportional to the diagonal elements of the Fubini-Study metric. We f…
Quantum annealing has great promise in leveraging quantum mechanics to solve combinatorial optimisation problems. However, to realize this promise to it's fullest extent we must appropriately leverage the underlying physics. In this spirit, I examine how the well known tendency of quantum annealers to seek solutions where more quantum fluctuations are allowed can be used to trade off optimality of the solution to a synthetic problem for the ability to have a more flexible solution, where some variables can be changed at little or no cost. I demonstrate this tradeoff experimentally using the re…
Quantum annealing technologies aim to solve computational optimization and sampling problems. QPU (Quantum Processing Unit) machines such as the D-Wave system use the QUBO (Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization) formula to define model optimization problems for quantum annealing. This machine uses quantum effects to speed up computing time better than classical computers. We propose a vehicle routing problem that can be formulated in the QUBO model as a combinatorial problem, which gives the possible route solutions increases exponentially. The solution aims to optimize the vehicle's jou…
Quantum annealing devices such as the ones produced by D-Wave systems are typically used for solving optimization and sampling tasks, and in both academia and industry the characterization of their usefulness is subject to active research. Any problem that can naturally be described as a weighted, undirected graph may be a particularly interesting candidate, since such a problem may be formulated a as quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) instance, which is solvable on D-Wave's Chimera graph architecture. In this paper, we introduce a quantum-assisted finite-element method for des…
Accuracy and Performance Evaluation of Quantum, Classical and Hybrid Solvers for the Max-Cut Problem
Jožef Stefan Institute（约瑟夫·斯蒂芬研究所）；University of Ljubljana（卢布尔雅那大学）；Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt（阿尔卑斯-亚得里亚克拉根福大学）；Rudolfovo - Science and Technology Centre Novo mesto（鲁多尔福沃新梅斯托科学与技术中心）
Applications of quantum annealing to magnetic dipole hyperfine structure constants: First results beyond energies for atoms
TCG Centres for Research and Education in Science and Technology（科学技术研究与教育中心）；Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati（蒂鲁帕蒂印度理工学院）；Malmö University（马尔默大学）
In this paper, we eliminate the classical outer learning loop of the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) and present a strategy to find good parameters for QAOA based on topological arguments of the problem graph and tensor network techniques. Starting from the observation of the concentration of control parameters of QAOA, we find a way to classically infer parameters which scales polynomially in the number of qubits and exponentially with the depth of the circuit. Using this strategy, the quantum processing unit (QPU) is only needed to infer the final state of QAOA. This method…
The Quest for Quantum Advantage in Combinatorial Optimization: End-to-end Benchmarking of Quantum Solvers vs. Multi-core Classical Solvers
Kipu Quantum GmbH（基普量子有限公司）；Department of Physical Chemistry, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU（巴斯克大学物理化学系）；Zuse Institute Berlin（柏林祖斯研究所）；Technische Universität Berlin（柏林工业大学）；IBM Quantum, IBM Research Europe – Zurich（IBM量子，IBM欧洲苏黎世研究院）；IDAL, Electronic Engineering Department, ETSE-UV, University of Valencia（瓦伦西亚大学电子工程学院IDAL）
Both simulated quantum annealing and physical quantum annealing have shown the emergence of "heavy tails" in their performance as optimizers: The total time needed to solve a set of random input instances is dominated by a small number of very hard instances. Classical simulated annealing, in contrast, does not show such heavy tails. Here we explore the origin of these heavy tails, which appear for inputs with high local degeneracy---large isoenergetic clusters of states in Hamming space. This category includes the low-precision Chimera-structured problems studied in recent benchmarking work c…
Quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) is the mathematical formalism for phrasing and solving a class of optimization problems that are combinatorial in nature. Due to their natural equivalence with the two dimensional Ising model for ferromagnetism in statistical mechanics, problems from the QUBO class can be solved on quantum annealing hardware. In this paper, we report a QUBO formatting of the problem of optimal control of time-dependent traffic signals on an artificial grid-structured road network so as to ease the flow of traffic, and the use of D-Wave Systems' quantum anneale…
Current quantum annealing (QA) hardware suffers from practical limitations such as finite temperature, sparse connectivity, small qubit numbers, and control error. We propose new algorithms for mapping boolean constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) onto QA hardware mitigating these limitations. In particular we develop a new embedding algorithm for mapping a CSP onto a hardware Ising model with a fixed sparse set of interactions, and propose two new decomposition algorithms for solving problems too large to map directly into hardware. The mapping technique is locally-structured, as hardware c…
Multi-Mode Quantum Annealing for Generative Representation Learning with Boltzmann Priors
Department of Statistics and Data Science, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Republic of Korea（统计与数据科学系，延世大学，首尔03722，大韩民国）；Department of Applied Statistics, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Republic of Korea（应用统计学系，延世大学，首尔03722，大韩民国）；Department of Quantum Information, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Republic of Korea（量子信息系，延世大学，首尔03722，大韩民国）
In this article, we show how to map a sampling of the hardest artificial intelligence problems in space exploration onto equivalent Ising models that then can be attacked using quantum annealing implemented in D-Wave machine. We overview the existing results as well as propose new Ising model implementations for quantum annealing. We review supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms for classification and clustering with applications to feature identification and anomaly detection. We introduce algorithms for data fusion and image matching for remote sensing applications. We overview plan…
