Semiclassical approach to finite temperature quantum annealing with trapped ions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the robustness of a trapped ions quantum annealer against thermal phonons using a semiclassical approach, comparing it with exact quantum evolution to understand its effectiveness in solving NP-hard problems.

Contribution

It introduces a semiclassical method to analyze thermal effects in trapped ions quantum annealing and benchmarks it against quantum evolution for better understanding.

Findings

Semiclassical approach effectively models thermal phonon effects.

Quantum annealer shows robustness against thermal phonons.

Benchmarking reveals the limits of semiclassical approximation.

Abstract

Recently it has been demonstrated that an ensemble of trapped ions may serve as a quantum annealer for the number-partitioning problem [Nature Comm. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11524]. This hard computational problem may be addressed employing a tunable spin glass architecture. Following the proposal of the trapped ions annealer, we study here its robustness against thermal effects, that is, we investigate the role played by thermal phonons. For the efficient description of the system, we use a semiclassical approach, and benchmark it against the exact quantum evolution. The aim is to understand better and characterize how the quantum device approaches a solution of, an otherwise, difficult to solve NP-hard problem.