AI 中文总结
研究量子退火中退火时间分布对性能的影响，提出基于世界线磁化率的低成本替代调度，通过与传统及精确调度对比，发现其在有限时间条件下表现优异，源于两种失效模式，且完整方法已在开源框架实现。
AI 中文摘要
量子退火的性能关键取决于可用退火时间沿演化过程的分布方式。虽然罗兰·塞尔夫局部绝热调度在理论上是最优的，但它需要完整了解瞬时能隙，这对于大型优化问题不切实际。我们基于模拟量子退火期间测量的世界线磁化率提出了一种计算成本低的替代调度。该磁化率直接从平衡蒙特卡罗采样获得，无需能谱信息就能识别退火的关键区域。以谢林顿·柯克帕特里克自旋玻璃实例的精确对角化作为基准，我们表明所得调度始终优于传统线性退火，并且在很大一部分实例中也超过了精确的罗兰·塞尔夫调度。我们证明这种意外行为源于精确局部绝热调度的两种有限时间失效模式：一种是边界能隙陷阱，其中最小能隙出现在退火结束时；另一种是由围绕内部最小能隙过度局部化的时间分配引起的振荡不稳定性。这些结果表明，在实际有限时间条件下，基于廉价平衡可观测量的稳健调度可以优于基于精确能谱间隙的策略。完整方法已在开源Qanneal框架中实现。
英文摘要
The performance of quantum annealing depends critically on how the available annealing time is distributed along the evolution. Although the Roland Cerf local adiabatic schedule is theoretically optimal, it requires complete knowledge of the instantaneous spectral gap, making it impractical for large optimization problems. We propose a computationally inexpensive surrogate schedule based on the worldline magnetization susceptibility measured during simulated quantum annealing. The susceptibility is obtained directly from equilibrium Monte Carlo sampling and identifies the critical region of the anneal without requiring spectral information. Using exact diagonalization of Sherrington Kirkpatrick spin glass instances as ground truth, we show that the resulting schedule consistently outperforms conventional linear annealing and, for a substantial fraction of instances, also surpasses the exact Roland Cerf schedule. We demonstrate that this unexpected behaviour originates from two finite time failure modes of exact local adiabatic scheduling a boundary gap trap, in which the minimum spectral gap occurs at the end of the anneal, and an oscillatory instability caused by excessively localized time allocation around an interior minimum gap. These results suggest that robust scheduling based on inexpensive equilibrium observables can outperform exact spectral gap based strategies under realistic finite time conditions. The complete methodology is implemented in the open source Qanneal framework.
