Recursive simulation of quantum annealing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a recursive simulation method for adiabatic quantum annealing, enabling efficient numerical analysis of its performance under both unitary and non-unitary evolutions, revealing different success probability distributions.

Contribution

The paper develops a novel recursive algorithm for simulating adiabatic quantum annealing, addressing previous computational limitations.

Findings

Distinct success probability distributions for unitary and non-unitary evolutions

Efficient simulation method for adiabatic quantum processes

Potential for improved performance evaluation of quantum annealers

Abstract

The evaluation of the performance of adiabatic annealers is hindered by lack of efficient algorithms for simulating their behaviour. We exploit the analyticity of the standard model for the adiabatic quantum process to develop an efficient recursive method for its numerical simulation in case of both unitary and non-unitary evolution. Numerical simulations show distinctly different distributions for the most important figure of merit of adiabatic quantum computing --- the success probability --- in these two cases.