Variational-Adiabatic Quantum Solver for Systems of Linear Equations with Warm Starts

TL;DR

This paper introduces a variational quantum algorithm that combines adiabatic evolution and warm starts to efficiently solve linear systems, overcoming barren plateau issues and improving solution accuracy on shallow circuits.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel variational quantum solver that integrates adiabatic evolution with warm starts to enhance linear system solutions and avoid barren plateaus.

Findings

Successfully applied to discretized heat flow equations

Achieves solutions close to the global minimum

Operates effectively with shallow quantum circuits

Abstract

We propose a revisited variational quantum solver for linear systems, designed to circumvent the barren plateau phenomenon by combining two key techniques: adiabatic evolution and warm starts. To this end, we define an initial Hamiltonian with a known ground state which is easily implemented on the quantum circuit, and then "adiabatically" evolve the Hamiltonian by tuning a control variable in such a way that the final ground state matches the solution to the given linear system. This evolution is carried out in incremental steps, and the ground state at each step is found by minimizing the energy using the parameter values corresponding to the previous minimum as a warm start to guide the search. As a first test case, the method is applied to several linear systems obtained by discretizing a one-dimensional heat flow equation with different physical assumptions and grid choices. Our method successfully and reliably improves upon the solution to the same problem as obtained by a conventional quantum solver, reaching very close to the global minimum also in the case of very shallow circuit implementations.