Digitized Counter-Diabatic Quantum Optimization for Bin Packing Problem

TL;DR

This paper introduces a digitized counter-diabatic quantum algorithm (DC-QAOA) for the 1D bin packing problem, demonstrating improved solution quality and resource efficiency on quantum hardware.

Contribution

The work develops and evaluates a novel DC-QAOA approach with multiple ansatz schemes, highlighting the superior performance of the CD-mixer variant for quantum optimization.

Findings

The CD-mixer ansatz outperforms other variants in accuracy and robustness.

High-quality solutions achieved on a 10-item bin packing instance on IBM quantum hardware.

DC-QAOA reduces quantum resource requirements while maintaining solution quality.

Abstract

The bin packing problem, a classical NP-hard combinatorial optimization challenge, has emerged as a promising candidate for quantum computing applications. In this work, we address the one-dimensional bin packing problem (1dBPP) using a digitized counter-diabatic quantum algorithm (DC-QAOA), which incorporates counter-diabatic (CD) driving to reduce quantum resource requirements while maintaining high solution quality, outperforming traditional methods such as QAOA. We evaluate three ansatz schemes-DC-QAOA, a CD-inspired ansatz, and a CD-mixer ansatz-each integrating CD terms with distinct combinations of cost and mixer Hamiltonians, resulting in different DC-QAOA variants. Among these, the CD-mixer ansatz demonstrates superior performance, showing robustness across various iteration counts, layer depths, and Hamiltonian steps, while consistently producing the most accurate approximations to exact solutions. To validate our approach, we solve a 10-item 1dBPP instance on an IBM quantum computer, optimizing circuit structures through simulations. Despite constraints on circuit depth, the CD-mixer ansatz achieves high accuracy and a high likelihood of success. These findings establish DC-QAOA, particularly the CD-mixer variant, as a powerful framework for solving combinatorial optimization problems on near-term quantum devices.