Theory of quantum annealing of an Ising spin glass.
Probing the lowest energy configuration of a complex system by quantum annealing was recently found to be more effective than its classical, thermal counterpart. By comparing classical and quantum Monte Carlo annealing protocols on the two-dimensional random Ising model (a prototype spin glass), we confirm the superiority of quantum annealing relative to classical annealing. We also propose a theory of quantum annealing based on a cascade of Landau-Zener tunneling events. For both classical and quantum annealing, the residual energy after annealing is inversely proportional to a power of the logarithm of the annealing time, but the quantum case has a larger power that makes it faster.
Santoro
Giuseppe E
GE
Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA) and Istituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia (INFM) (Unità di Ricerca SISSA), I-34014 Trieste, Italy.
Martonák
Roman
R
Tosatti
Erio
E
Car
Roberto
R