Counterdiabatic Reverse Annealing

TL;DR

This paper introduces Counterdiabatic Reverse Annealing, a new quantum annealing method that improves performance in short-time regimes by using approximate counterdiabatic driving, with potential for near-term quantum device applications.

Contribution

It develops a novel counterdiabatic reverse annealing protocol using low-order nested commutators, expanding the applicability of reverse annealing to short-time domains.

Findings

Enhanced ground-state fidelity compared to unassisted reverse annealing

Reduced time to solution with counterdiabatic techniques

Feasible implementation with local counterdiabatic potentials

Abstract

We present Counterdiabatic Reverse Annealing, a novel quantum annealing protocol that extends the range of application of reverse annealing to the previously inaccessible short-time domain. This is achieved by exploiting approximate counterdiabatic driving expanded in low-order nested commutators. In this work, we offer a comparative study of the performance of this new technique to that of unassisted reverse annealing in terms of metrics such as the ground-state fidelity and the time to solution. We provide a quantitative measure of the energetic cost of counterdiabatic reverse annealing and show that significant improvements are possible even using local counterdiabatic potentials, paving the way toward the experimental implementation in near-term quantum devices.