QuantumAnnealing: A Julia Package for Simulating Dynamics of Transverse Field Ising Models

TL;DR

QuantumAnnealing.jl is an open-source Julia package that simulates the dynamics of Transverse Field Ising Models, aiding in the development, verification, and comparison of quantum annealing hardware and algorithms on classical computers.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive toolkit for simulating analog quantum computers, including custom annealing schedules and dynamic evolution, which was previously limited in classical simulation tools.

Findings

Enables rapid prototyping of quantum models

Facilitates verification of quantum device performance

Allows comparison of classical and quantum approaches for small systems

Abstract

Analog Quantum Computers are promising tools for improving performance on applications such as modeling behavior of quantum materials, providing fast heuristic solutions to optimization problems, and simulating quantum systems. Due to the challenges of simulating dynamic quantum systems, there are relatively few classical tools for modeling the behavior of these devices and verifying their performance. QuantumAnnealing.jl provides a toolkit for performing simulations of Analog Quantum Computers on classical hardware. This package includes functionality for simulation of the time evolution of the Transverse Field Ising Model, replicating annealing schedules used by real world annealing hardware, implementing custom annealing schedules, and more. This allows for rapid prototyping of models expected to display interesting behavior, verification of the performance of quantum devices, and easy comparison against the expected behavior of quantum devices against classical approaches for small systems. The software is provided as open-source and is available through Julia's package registry system.