论文标题
为什么以及何时暂停量子退火？
Why and when is pausing beneficial in quantum annealing?
论文作者
论文摘要
使用量子退火硬件的最新经验结果表明，退火暂停对寻找各种问题的基础状态的可能性具有令人惊讶的有益影响。到目前为止，缺乏对这种现象的理论解释。在这里，我们提供了使用主方程框架暂停的分析，并为策略提供了导致成功概率增强的条件。我们通过数值模拟确定的条件，然后证明是足够的，要求相对于暂停持续时间，放松速率很大，并且在越过最小间隙后较小，在退火末端较小，并且在此间隔内也累积地缩小，从而使系统累积地缩小。这确定观察到的成功概率增强可以归因于不完整的量子弛豫，即是一种有益的非平衡耦合与环境的形式。
Recent empirical results using quantum annealing hardware have shown that mid anneal pausing has a surprisingly beneficial impact on the probability of finding the ground state for of a variety of problems. A theoretical explanation of this phenomenon has thus far been lacking. Here we provide an analysis of pausing using a master equation framework, and derive conditions for the strategy to result in a success probability enhancement. The conditions, which we identify through numerical simulations and then prove to be sufficient, require that relative to the pause duration the relaxation rate is large and decreasing right after crossing the minimum gap, small and decreasing at the end of the anneal, and is also cumulatively small over this interval, in the sense that the system does not thermally equilibrate. This establishes that the observed success probability enhancement can be attributed to incomplete quantum relaxation, i.e., is a form of beneficial non-equilibrium coupling to the environment.
