Development of research network on Quantum Annealing Computation and Information using Google Scholar data

TL;DR

This paper constructs and analyzes a research network of highly cited publications on Quantum Annealing and related topics, revealing growth patterns and categorization over four decades.

Contribution

It introduces a network-based analysis of top cited quantum annealing research papers from Google Scholar, highlighting publication growth trends and categorization.

Findings

Growth in publications follows exponential trend with different time scales.

Categories A and C have a growth time scale of about 10 years.

Categories B and D have a faster growth time scale of about 5 years.

Abstract

We build and analyze the network of hundred top cited nodes (research papers and books from Google Scholar; strength or citation of the nodes range from about 44000 up to 100) starting early 1980 to till last year. These searched publications (papers, books) are based on Quantum Annealing Computation and Information categorized in four different sets: A) Quantum/Transverse Field Spin Glass Model, B) Quantum Annealing, C) Quantum Adiabatic Computation and D) Quantum Computation Information in the title or abstract of the searched publications. We fitted the growth in the annual number of publication ($n_p$) in each of these four categories A to D to the form $n_p \sim\exp{(t/\tau)}$ where $t$ denotes the time in year. We found the scaling time $\tau$ to be of order about 10 years for category A and C whereas $\tau$ is order of about 5 years for category B and D.