Adiabatic Computing

Adiabatic Quantum Computing and Quantum Annealing

Erica K. Grant, Quantum Computing Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Travis S.
Humble, Quantum Computing Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190871994.013.32
Published online: 30 July 2020
Summary
Adiabatic quantum computing (AQC) is a model of computation that uses quantum mechanical processes
operating under adiabatic conditions. As a form of universal quantum computation, AQC employs the principles of
superposition, tunneling, and entanglement that manifest in quantum physical systems. The AQC model of
quantum computing is distinguished by the use of dynamical evolution that is slow with respect to the time and
energy scales of the underlying physical systems. This adiabatic condition enforces the promise that the quantum
computational state will remain well-defined and controllable thus enabling the development of new algorithmic
approaches.
Several notable algorithms developed within the AQC model include methods for solving unstructured search and
combinatorial optimization problems. In an idealized setting, the asymptotic complexity analyses of these
algorithms indicate computational speed-ups may be possible relative to state-of-the-art conventional methods.
However, the presence of non-ideal conditions, including non-adiabatic dynamics, residual thermal excitations,
and physical noise complicate the assessment of the potential computational performance. A relaxation of the
adiabatic condition is captured in the complementary computational heuristic of quantum annealing, which
accommodates physical systems operating at finite temperature and in open environments. While quantum
annealing (QA) provides a more accurate model for the behavior of actual quantum physical systems, the possibility
of non-adiabatic effects obscures a clear separation with conventional computing complexity.
A series of technological advances in the control of quantum physical systems have enabled experimental AQC and
QA. Prominent examples include demonstrations using superconducting electronics, which encode quantum
information in the magnetic flux induced by a weak current operating at cryogenic temperatures. A family of
devices developed specifically for unconstrained optimization problems has been applied to solve problems in
specific domains including logistics, finance, material science, machine learning, and numerical analysis. An
accompanying infrastructure has also developed to support these experimental demonstrations and to enable
access of a broader community of users. Although AQC is most commonly applied in superconducting technologies,
alternative approaches include optically trapped neutral atoms and ion-trap systems.
The significant progress in the understanding of AQC has revealed several open topics that continue to motivate
research into this model of quantum computation. Foremost is the development of methods for fault-tolerant
operation that will ensure the scalability of AQC for solving large-scale problems. In addition, unequivocal
experimental demonstrations that differentiate the computational power of AQC and its variants from conventional
computing approaches are needed. This will also require advances in the fabrication and control of quantum
physical systems under the adiabatic restrictions.
Keywords: quantum information, quantum computing, quantum algorithms, quantum computational models, adiabatic
quantum computing, quantum annealing, adiabatic theorem
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Subscriber: Universitat de Valencia; date: 09 May 2022
Subjects: Quantum Information
1. An Introduction to Quantum Computing
Quantum computing is a form of computation that explicitly uses quantum mechanical effects to
process information, and a quantum computer is a device that implements these principles to
solve computational problems. Quantum computers are distinguished by the use of the quantum
states of a physical system to store information (Nielsen & Chuang, 2010). Unlike classical bits of
information that are either 0 or 1, a quantum bit of information or qubit is a linear superposition
of 0 and 1. Formally, qubits represent normalized vectors within a two-dimensional Hilbert space
that can be visualized as points on the Bloch sphere shown in Figure 1. In particular, the opposing
poles of the Bloch sphere correspond to the orthogonal states of a physical system while every
point on the surface represents a valid linear superposition (Bengtsson & Zyczkowski, 2017).
Figure 1. The Bloch sphere is the geometric representation of a qubit as a superposition of two orthogonal
states. Every point on the surface of the sphere corresponds to valid qubit, whereas the states of a classical bit
correspond only to the the north and south poles designed as and , respectively. A qubit is specified by the
complex-valued coefficients and , which may be defined in terms of the spherical coordinates and .
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In general, interactions between quantum physical systems extend the principle of superposition
across multiple qubits, and the joint quantum states prepared by these interactions will manifest
as correlations in behaviors for the physical systems. Quantum states are said to be entangled
when these composite behaviors cannot be separated into independent processes—the behavior
of one system is directly dependent on the behavior of the other. Entanglement represents a
fundamentally new type of correlation that cannot be reproduced within the context of classical
physical theory (Horodecki et al., 2009). It is a hallmark of quantum mechanics and,
consequently, quantum computing.
A quantum algorithm is a set of operations that prepares superposition and entanglement and
transforms a quantum state. The quantum algorithms proposed for full-scale quantum
computers are expected to provide significant speedups over best-in-class conventional methods
for certain problems. For example, quantum computers are expected to efficiently simulate
quantum mechanics, which would provide insights into the structure, properties, and behavior of
systems with many particles or interactions (Feynman, 1982). Additional quantum-algorithmic
results impact the development of new methods for optimization, unstructured search, integer
factorization, systems of linear equations, and many other application areas (Nielsen & Chuang,
2010; Montanaxo, 2016). These potential performance gains continue to motivate the
development of quantum computers and applications to practical problems.
The concept of a universal quantum computer formalizes how arbitrary computations can be
performed (Deutsch, 1985) and enables a theory of quantum computational complexity
(Bernstein & Vazirani, 1997). Prominent classes from conventional complexity theory are found
to have distinct quantum analogues that categorize new classes of problems. Conceptual
requirements for an abstract quantum computer provide criteria that guide experimental efforts
to realize this technology and are often referred to as DiVincenzo Criteria (DiVincenzo, 2000).
Problem classes that are challenging to solve with conventional methods of computation are of
specific interest for quantum computation. In particular, the class NP represents those decision
problems with solutions that can be verified in polynomial time but are not known to be solved in
polynomial time. As the size of the input problem grows, the conventional resources required to
find a solution grow super-polynomially with respect to input size. Problems from the NP class
arise in many notable applications such as cryptography (Wieschebrink, 2006), routing and
scheduling (Lenstra & Kan, 1981), etc. Therefore, quantum computation is of interest for this
class of problems. Adiabatic quantum computation is especially focused on NP optimization
problems (NPO) that fall in the NP class but additionally must be a decision problem. Such
problems fit naturally into AQC because their solution can be encoded in the ground state and
translated into an Ising Hamiltonian in polynomial time (Lucas, 2014). Some example NPO
problems that have been formulated for AQC include satisfiability problems (Hogg, 2003), finding
cliques (Childs, Farhi, Goldstone, & Gutmann, 2000), and exact cover (Choi, 2010).
Experimental efforts to realize AQC and QA have used a variety of different quantum physical
systems including the spin of individual electrons (Struck & Burkard, 2016), the polarization of
single photons (Adami & Cerf, 1999), and the quantized magnetic flux in superconducting
electronics (Devoret & Martinis, 2005). However, interactions between such quantum physical
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systems and the environment may generate entangled or correlated states that represent a loss of
information to the uncontrolled surroundings. The coherence time quantifies the time scale over
which information may reliably persist in the primary system and this sets a fundamental limit
on how many operations can be performed. The development of well-characterized, reproducible
qubits continues to be an active area of experimental research for the realization of noisy,
intermediate-scale quantum computing devices (Preskill, 2018).
A quantum computing model defines how a quantum computer should operate. Several models
have been developed to implement universal quantum computation with each being
computationally equivalent but operationally distinct. The model of adiabatic quantum
computing is described in detail below, while a summary of the prominent circuit model can be
found elsewhere (Nielsen & Chuang, 2010). The choice of quantum computing model may be
tailored to the intended purpose of a quantum computer as some models more efficiently express
certain algorithms. In addition, limits on the controllability of a quantum physical system may
also make certain computational models better suited.
2. Adiabatic Quantum Computing
Adiabatic quantum computing (AQC) is a model of computation that uses quantum-mechanical

processes operating under adiabatic conditions. This model employs continuous-time evolution
of a quantum state from a well-defined initial value to compute a final observed value. The
evolution is modeled by the Schrödinger equation
(1)
operating in the presence of adiabatic changes to the governing Hamiltonian over the range
, where is Planck’s constant divided by . AQC is computationally equivalent to all
other quantum computing models, including the circuit and topological models, and it can
efficiently solve any problem in BQP (Aharonov et al., 2008). However, AQC was originally
proposed as a method for solving satisfiability problems (Farhi et al., 2000) and it has received
attention for the simplicity by which combinatorial optimization problems can be cast in
Hamiltonian forms (Lucas, 2014).
The principles of operation for AQC derive fundamentally from the adiabatic theorem, which
states that a quantum mechanical system will remain in an instantaneous eigenstate of the
Hamiltonian provided conditions on the internal energy and time scales are met (Born & Fock,
1928). In the simplest case, the adiabatic theorem requires:
1. There exists an energy gap between the populated eigenstate and all other excited energy
states.
2. The evolution time must be sufficiently slow to suppress internal excitation.
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The significance of these conditions may be illustrated through the example of a time-dependent
Hamiltonian
(2)
where and is the total evolution time. The time-dependent prefactors, in this context
referred to as temporal schedules and , control the interpolation of the initial and final
Hamiltonians and , respectively, which represent self-adjoint linear operators acting over
a Hilbert space of dimension with the integer referring to the number of qubits. In
particular, the schedules should be smooth and differentiable and they should satisfy the
boundary conditions and while and . The -th
instantaneous eigenstate for is then defined as
(3)
where is the instantaneous eigenspectrum of . If the quantum state

is prepared in the -th energy eigenstate of at time , then it will remain in the
-th instantaneous eigenstate under Schrödinger evolution provided the adiabatic conditions are
met. The adiabatic theorem promises that the quantum state at time will then be the
corresponding -th energy eigenstate of . The transformation from a known initial
state to a final, potentially unknown state represents adiabatic quantum computation.
In practice, the instantaneous ground state of is typically chosen for the computation, and
the initial Hamiltonian is selected to have a ground state that can be prepared directly. The
energy spectrum gap between the quantum computational state and all other states must remain
non-zero to ensure adiabatic evolution. Assuming the computational state is the ground state,
the minimum spectral gap of is defined as
(4)
where is any higher-lying energy state. The minimum spectral gap sets a lower bound
for the smallest internal energy scale that contributes to undesired coupling of the computational
ground state to erroneous, higher-lying eigenstates. These transitions arise from diabatic
quantum dynamics, with the most common example typified by Landau-Zener transitions
(Zener, 1932). When the Hamiltonian changes quickly, there is a non-negligible probability for
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diabatic transitions that corrupt the computation. These transitions may be avoided by selecting
the evolution time to be much longer than the timescale set by the inverse of the spectral gap.
Worst-case lower bounds for general Hamiltonian instances suggest must scale as
(Jansen et al., 2007), while more restrictive settings can improve this to (Elgart
& Hagedorn, 2012).
A central concern for assessing the computational efficiency of AQC is determining how the
adiabatic timescale must grow as the size increases. Generally, the spectral gap will
decrease as increases, but the rate of this decrease greatly affects the time complexity of the
computation. For example, assuming for some positive constant , then the minimum
time needed to ensure the adiabatic condition would increase exponentially with problem size.
This would indicate that an exponential increase in time is required to solve a general problem
within the AQC model. Presently, theoretical estimates for how the minimum spectral gap scales
with size are inconclusive for the general setting but may be developed for specific Hamiltonian
models (see examples in Ref. (Albash & Lidar, 2018). Answering the general spectral, gap question
appears to be computationally difficult, if not impossible (Cubitt et al., 2015). In addition, the
choice of temporal interpolation strongly affects the instantaneous spectrum. Some specific
instances of Hamiltonians have been found to support minimum computational times that are
sub-exponential in , provided a more general form of the temporal interpolation is employed
(Roland & Cerf, 2002).
As noted above, the initial Hamiltonian should enable convenient preparation of the
quantum state from which the computation begins. A frequently used Hamiltonian is the form
(5)
where each term represents the -fold tensor product of identity operators and the
Pauli operator for the -th qubit. The energy eigenstates and eigenvalues for this Hamiltonian
can be analytically constructed while experimental methods for preparing those eigenstates have
been developed (Farhi et al., 2000).
The final Hamiltonian encodes the problem to be solved by AQC as the prepared quantum
state expresses the corresponding solution. The Hamiltonian complexity determines the types of
problems that can be solved. For example, a Hamiltonian capable of expressing a sum of arbitrary
-local interactions is QMA-complete, while solving the problem of a 2-local Ising Hamiltonian
is NP-Complete (Kempe et al., 2006; Bravyi, Divincenzo, Oliveira, & Terhal, 2006). In particular,
the latter Ising model provides a direct connection to a variety of computationally significant
problems. Although the Ising model was originally developed to describe the physical pairwise
interactions between the spins in a magnetic material, it has since been used to describe many
other systems composed from interacting binary variables. A quantum mechanical version of the
Ising Hamiltonian may be cast in the form
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(6)
where represents a bias on qubit , is the Pauli operator, is a constant, and describes
the coupling strength between qubits and . This formulation can be used to model a wide
variety of combinatorial optimization problems (Lucas, 2014), in which they are reduced to
finding the ground state of an appropriate Hamiltonian. We defer additional examples to the
section “Combinatorial Optimization,” but we note that the type of Hamiltonian plays a
prominent role in the problem complexity.
3. Quantum Annealing
Efforts to realize AQC using quantum physical systems are susceptible to non-ideal conditions
that undermine the promise of the adiabatic theorem. This includes preparing pure quantum
states that evolve under strictly adiabatic dynamics, a fundamental challenge in the control of
quantum physical systems. A relaxation of the adiabatic condition is captured in the
complementary computational heuristic of quantum annealing (QA), which accommodates
physical systems operating at finite temperature and in open environments. Quantum annealing
is a method for identifying the minimum of an objective function using an approach that is based
on the principles of AQC but fails to meet its stringent requirements. Additional dynamical
behaviors including stochastic dynamics may be present during the actual evolution of the
quantum state (Kadowaki & Nishimori, 1998). This revokes the guarantee of remaining in the
instantaneous eigenstate, though in practice it may be sufficiently close.
In practice, quantum annealing evolves a quantum state under the time-dependent Hamiltonian
in Eq. (2). However, the dynamics may not be modeled as Schrödinger evolution. When the
dynamics are insufficiently slow, the quantum state will mix with nearby energy eigenstates and
the probability to observe the expected outcomes will be decreased. In addition, the non-zero
temperature of operation for quantum annealing invalidates the pure state description. A
statistical mixture of energy eigenstates is a more appropriate model for initialization of the
computation. The mixture of the initial state depends on the local operating temperature as well
as the energy splitting between levels used for the computational basis.
Analyzing the results from QA requires statistical sampling to build confidence in the observed
outcome. The collected results may then be used in decision-making processes. For example,
when the lowest energy eigenstate is the solution, higher energy states can be rejected. However,
this comes at a cost that is proportional to the number rejected. In addition, QA lacks a guarantee
that the sought-after solution will be included in the observed results. If the dynamics nearly
satisfy the adiabatic condition, then the probability distribution should be concentrated at
energies near the sought-after state.
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Similar behaviors in performance are observed with several important methods of classical
computation such as simulated annealing (SA). In simulated (thermal) annealing, the system
state overcomes these energy barriers through random changes driven by temperature
fluctuations (Heim et al., 2015). However, there is a probability for the system to get trapped in a
local minimum if the temperature fluctuations are not sufficient to cross a high energy barrier. In
SA, the energy landscape in static and thermal excitations drive dynamics. By contrast, QA
changes the energy landscape to drive the system state toward the energetic minimum. QA can
also exploit quantum tunneling through barriers.
Figure 2. At , quantum annealing begins with a prepared state with uniform probability. During the
annealing steps, the probability begins to concentrate at the minimums. The dynamics drive the probability toward
the global minimum by final time .
While QA is based on a more realistic model for the behavior of actual quantum physical systems,
the possibility of non-adiabatic effects obscures a clear separation with conventional computing
complexity. The use of quasi-adiabatic evolution of mixed quantum states in an open
environment is typically characterized as a heuristic because it lacks many of the computational
promises offered by AQC. This has led to empirical evaluations of the efficacy of QA for solving
both real and synthetic problems with mixed results (Katzgraber et al., 2015; Weigel, Katzgraber,
Machta, Hamze, & Andrist, 2015; King et al., 2015; Boixo et al., 2016; Denchev et al., 2016). In
particular, it remains unclear how to best categorize the computational power of QA even under
relatively well understood Hamiltonians. For example, a stoquastic Hamiltonian is defined to
have only real, non-positive off-diagonal matrix elements in the standard basis representation
(Bravyi et al. 2006). This restricted form captures the quantum transverse Ising Hamiltonian that
underlies current experimental approaches to QA. Theoretical evidence indicates that stoquastic
Hamiltonians are insufficient for universal adiabatic quantum computing when restricted to the
ground state, but permitting excited-state evolution is found to remove this limitation (Jordan et
al., 2010). By contrast, non-stoquastic Hamiltonians are found to be more expressive for
universal quantum computing, but the size of the minimum energy gap for these Hamiltonian
remains unclear in general (Albash & Lidar, 2018). Solving non-stoquastic Hamiltonians
efficiently may be an important step toward universal AQC and enhancing solution quality using
QA (Nishimori & Takada, 2017).
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4. Hardware Implementations
Designing quantum computing hardware to implement either AQC or the QA heuristic requires
time-dependent control of the Hamiltonian governing an array of quantum physical systems
(Hauke et al., 2019). For computation, the hardware must also encode a relevant problem into the
time-dependent Hamiltonian by programming interactions between the physical qubits and
measuring the final prepared quantum state. The leading technology to demonstrate AQC is
currently superconducting electronics but other systems have been proposed for similar
purposes, for example, trapped ions (Zhang et al., 2018). A leading implementation of the QA
heuristic is found in the recent family of processors produced by D-Wave Systems, which are
based on a superconducting flux-qubit design (Bunyk et al., 2014).
4.1 Example: Superconducting Electronics

A wide variety of qubit designs are possible with many specific choices of superconducting
electronics being developed to support the encoding of a two-level system through the use of
Josephson junctions (Wendin, 2017). A Josephson junction is a nanoscale insulating layer on the
superconducting loop that is a leading design choice for AQC/QA implementations (Johnson et al.,
2011). Although electrons move freely on the surface of a superconductor with no resistance,
electrons probabilistically tunnel through the Josephson junction to form a superposition of
states and thus a two-level system. A flux qubit is an example that prepares a quantized magnetic
flux (Johnson et al., 2011) in a superposition of states using a Josephson junction as shown in
Figure 3. While in a superposition of states, external magnetic fields can be applied to change the
potential energy landscape or “weight” of each qubit according to the adiabatic theorem. The
qubits are also arranged in such a way that the magnetic field of each qubit is directly dependent
on its surrounding qubits via magnetic interference. This magnetic coupling is analogous to
entanglement and is mathematically identical for the purpose of quantum computation. After the
evolution is complete (at final time T), superconducting quantum-interference devices (SQUID)
which are inductively coupled to each qubit detect and read-out the magnetic field/state of each
qubit (Jaklevic et al., 1964).
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Figure 3. A flux-qubit design based on a compound Josephson junction in which counter-propagating currents
induce a magnetic field. The flux qubit is encoded within the resulting magnetic flux while externally applied
control biases tune the current (Johnson et al., 2011).
A key challenge that arises in building a scalable AQC/QA device using superconducting
electronics is maximizing the connectivity of the physical elements. An ideal design would enable
all-to-all connectivity between the physical elements that represent the qubits as this ensures
the most direct form of interactions for encoding an arbitrary problem Hamiltonian. However,
the two-dimensional plane in which superconducting circuit technology is typically fabricated
imposes a physical restriction on the degree of connectivity that can be fabricated. Consequently,
trade-offs in the physical design are required. Such limited connectivity may still enable encoding
of an arbitrary Hamiltonian but at the expense of redundant encoding of logical variables as
chains of (perfectly) correlated spins. The challenge of mapping this smaller, more densely
connected graph into the limited connectivity of available hardware is known as minor
embedding (Choi, 2008), and a wide variety of techniques have been developed for this pre-
processing step (Klymko et al., 2014; Venturelli et al., 2015; Goodrich et al., 2018).
A second key challenge that arises for hardware implementations of AQC/QA is minimizing the
noise arising from the environment and the applied control signals. In particular, design choices
for the superconducting electronics can enable certain features of the physical system to be more
or less resilient to noise in the electrical control signals used (Harris et al., 2010). For the flux-
qubits that feature prominently in AQC/QA implementations, there is a known sensitivity to flux
noise that arises from magnetic-field fluctuations within the electronic circuits; these may be due
to direct noise in the applied electrical fields or induced noise in nearby conductors (Quintana et
al., 2017). In either case, the precision with which the time-dependent evolution may be
controlled is limited by such noise.
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4.2 Hardware Controls

The control of AQC/QA hardware requires tuning the time-dependent Hamiltonian by which the
physical system evolves. Methods for adjusting and tuning the initial and final Hamiltonian
parameters as well as the interpolating time-dependent schedule are necessary to drive dynamics
of problem-specific quantum states. These controls may be used to improve the performance of
AQC or QA programs by adjusting the interpolation either to better approximate adiabatic
evolution or refine the problem definition. There are several approaches including varying the
rate at which the energy landscape evolves, tuning the parameters or weights in the formulation
of the Hamiltonian (Choi, 2008; Pudenz, 2016), and adjusting the initial Hamiltonian. These
controls determine the dynamics and can affect the quality of the solution as well as time to the
solution.
As described by the adiabatic theorem in Section , Adiabatic Quantum Computing, the time
needed to ensure adiabatic evolution of the problem Hamiltonian is inversely proportional to
the minimum energy gap . Therefore, the shortest possible total is dictated by . This is
based on the assumption that rate of evolution remains constant in time (Farhi et al., 2000).
However, the total time of a quantum computation via adiabatic evolution can be improved by
applying the adiabatic condition locally to infinitesimal time intervals for . As shown in
Figure 4, the spectral gap changes over time and may only reach its minimum value in a very
small region of the dynamics. Therefore, a more optimal schedule would account for the local
spectral gap by increasing the rate of evolution when the energy gap widens and decreasing the
rate of evolution when the energy gap narrows, as shown in Figure 5.
The advantages of local adiabatic evolution have been applied to an example of Grover’s search
algorithm, which returns a sought-after value encoded into a target Hamiltonian (Roland & Cerf,
2002). Classically, this search problem takes on average queries, where is the number of
entries in the database. Grover’s algorithm for the circuit model of quantum computing was
shown previously to obtain a quadratic speedup relative to the best classical method (Nielsen &
Chuang, 2010). Roland and Cerf extended this analysis to AQC by showing a similar speedup
is possible when using local control of the schedule and an evolution time (Roland & Cerf, 2002)
(7)
for recovery error . .
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Figure 4. The time-dependent energy eigenspectrum for the time-dependent Hamiltonian used an example of
Grover’s search algorithm for AQC where is the position in the anneal schedule. Note that the spectral gap
between the ground state and first excited state changes with time (Roland & Cerf, 2002).
Page 12 of 25
Figure 5. The optimal local schedule for implementing Grover’s search using AQC accounts for the time-
dependent behavior of the spectral gap shown in Figure 4 where is the position in the anneal schedule. This
schedule tailors the dynamics to evolve more slowly near the minimum spectral gap at and faster outside of
this region.
To implement this sort of scheduling, there must be some understanding of how the energy
landscape fluctuates in time, namely how the energy gap ( ) changes. Therefore, must be
approximated for each time slice, . Knowing for requires knowing the ground state and
first excited state for all . However, there are some potentially powerful tricks that could
approximate an evolution schedule prior to solving a problem. For instance, there may be
similarities between problems that fall into various categories. Pre-processing methods could be
used to sweep over parameters to find optimal controls, or sampling the energy landscape could
reveal an optimal annealing schedule for a category of problems. There may also be key features
of a problem that can be used to approximate an annealing schedule through machine-learning
methods.
Another mechanism for improving total anneal time is to control the initial Hamiltonian. This
was first suggested by Farhi et al. 2009 when they chose the initial Hamiltonian ( ) for a set of
3-SAT optimization problems known to have a very small in the standard AQC model (Farhi
et al., 2009).
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(8)
where is chosen to be or randomly and with equal probability. With this method, the
energy landscape is modified such that there is a high probability to remove the narrow energy
gap and get a larger if the problem instance is solved many times with different randomly
selected (Farhi et al., 2009). This method is attractive because problems can be solved quickly
and globally without prior knowledge of the energy landscape. However, it can be difficult to
know how many different to use for a particular problem instance to ensure that a solution
close to the ground state is discovered.
Another strategy is to formulate the initial Hamiltonian such that its ground state is the best
guess for the ground state of the problem Hamiltonian (Perdomo-Ortiz et al., 2011). If after
running the problem some number of times, a lower energy state ( ) is discovered, is set
as the new ground state of and the process is repeated. This can be very useful for problems
where there is some prior intuition for what the answer might be; it is often referred to as the
“warm-start approach.”
5. Applications
Several applications have been developed within the AQC model to take advantage of its explicit
representation of optimization (McGeoch & Wang, 2013). Broadly, suitable combinatorial
optimization may be found in diverse areas including unconstrained and constrained
optimization (Hen & Spedalieri, 2016; Santoro & Tosatti, 2006; Dinneen et al., 2019; Bian et al.,
2016), number theory and graph theory (Bian et al., 2013; Ushijima-Mwesigwa et al., 2017;
Chapuis et al., 2019; Jiang et al., 2018), and machine-learning (Neven et al., 2008; Dridi &
Alghassi, 2017; Mott et al., 2017; Adachi & Henderson, 2015). Extension of these ideas to specific
application problems has also received significant attention (Feynman, 1982), (Neukaxt et al.,
2017; Perdomo-Ortiz et al., 2012; Crispin & Syrichas, 2013; Rosenberg et al., 2016; Kalinin &
Berloff, 2018; Marzec, 2016).
A second area of AQC applications is data analytics and, in particular, several applications have
been developed to leverage QA to investigate probability distributions. Sampling from the
prepared distribution provides a convenient method for calculating expectation values and other
statistics. This data analytic technique forms the basis of many machine-learning methods (Mott
et al., 2017; Adachi & Henderson, 2015; Deng & Yu et al., 2014; Schrock et al., 2017; Potok et al.,
2018).
Page 14 of 25
A third emerging application area is the simulation of quantum Hamiltonian models, which is an
important focus of study for the physical sciences (e.g., in high-energy physics, chemistry,
materials science, and biology). These applications sample the quantum state prepared by a
model adiabatic process to estimate the physical features of quantum-mechanical systems
(Harris et al., 2018; King et al., 2018; Xia et al., 2017).
5.1 Combinatorial Optimization

Optimization problems seek the best solution within a set of many candidates. They are often
difficult to solve because the solution may not be obvious or it may not be easy to quickly search
the candidates. Solvers for optimization problems have found a natural implementation within
the AQC model that can be designed to follow evolution of the lowest energy state of a model
Hamiltonian. By designing the model Hamiltonian to mimic an optimization problem, the
preparation of a final quantum state can represent the solution to the original optimization
problem. Moreover, AQC offers the promise that the solution is optimal when the adiabatic
condition is met throughout the computation. The QA heuristic may also be used for
optimization, but it does not guarantee that the optimal solution will be found.
The choice of the target Hamiltonian determines the type of optimization problems that can be
solved using either AQC or QA. For example, currently available QA hardware relies on a target
Hamiltonian that models an Ising Hamiltonian, as described in Eq. 6. A wide variety of problems
have been reduced to the Ising form (Lucas, 2014; De las Cuevas & Cubitt, 2016). The Ising
Hamiltonian itself is naturally related to quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO).
The QUBO problem is formulated to find the minimum of a quadratic polynomial with binary
variables, that is,
(9)
where , represents the linear term to be minimized, and describes the quadratic
interactions or correlations between variables. The conversion from QUBO to Ising form is
performed by using the transformation of variable to spin . The classical
spin variable can then be substituted by the corresponding quantum operator to achieve a
quantum Ising Hamiltonian as defined by Eq. 6. A variety of different combinatorial optimization
problems have been reduced to this form (Lucas, 2014). We briefly describe several examples
below.
3-SAT. A satisfiability (SAT) problem determines whether an assignment for Boolean variables
that satisfies a set of logical clauses exists. Such a problem arises in many practical applications
including product model checking and verification, planning and protocols, structural design, etc
(Biere et al., 2009). The well-known Cook-Levin theorem from computational complexity theory
Page 15 of 25
places the 3-SAT problem in the NP-Complete complexity class (Cook, 1971; Levin, 1973), where
this variant is specialized to cases for which every clause has at most three variables. Moreover,
3-SAT provides a constructive means by which a variety of other problems can be shown to lie in
the NP hierarchy (Karp, 1972). This includes the Ising problem introduced above, which was
identified by Farhi et al. (2000) as an important step in solving 3-SAT within AQC.
When introducing AQC as a method for solving optimization problems, Farhi showed how AQC
could be used to solve 3-SAT using a 3-local Hamiltonian
(10)
where is a -local Hamiltonian corresponding to the -th clause (Farhi et al., 2000). If the
smallest eigenvalue of is , then each clause of the problem is satisfiable. (Albash & Lidar,
2018).
Binary Integer Linear Programming. Binary Integer Linear Programming (BILP) is an NP-Hard
problem that maximizes or minimizes an objective function subject to a series of constraints.
Practical examples include portfolio optimization (Venturelli & Kondratyev, 2018; Rosenberg et
al., 2016), scheduling, networking (Neukart et al., 2017), etc.
(11)
where and are variables, is a hard constraint, and . To solve this problem with
AQC, it must transform into an unconstrained problem. The Ising Hamiltonian representation is
given by
(12)
where the hard constraint around becomes an unconstrained penalty for any deviation around
and and are weights that balance the first and second terms of Eq. 12 during the
maximization of the parameters.
Page 16 of 25
Graph Theory. Graphs are used to represent networks where each node is an object and the lines
connecting each node represent the relationships between objects. Graph theory can be used to
solve many NP-Hard optimization problems like set cover (Karp, 1972), graph partitioning (Fu &
Anderson, 1986), and graph coloring (Jensen & Toft, 2011) and the NP-complete traveling-
salesman problem (TSP) (Lawler, 1985). The TSP, for instance, aims to find the shortest route
which hits all desired destinations. These problems have been mapped successfully to quantum
annealing hardware (Lucas, 2014; Titiloye & Crispin, 2011; Martonak et al., 2004; Cao et al., 2016).
5.2 Machine Learning

Machine learning using AQC and QA-based methods has attracted significant interest for a
number of applications. Broadly, machine learning infers correlations from data, and several
different approaches have been developed for this purpose within the AQC model. This includes
both supervised and unsupervised training methods, which cast training as a global optimization
problem that may be reduced to finding the lowest-energy state of a corresponding Hamiltonian
(Lloyd et al., 2013). Because QA is able to find a solution that is close-to-optimal within a large set
of possibilities, there is interest in using this approach to either optimize or accelerate the
training state of machine learning. As part of an unsupervised machine-learning algorithm,
O’Malley et al. (2017) used quantum annealing to recognize facial-feature patterns.
In another application, quantum annealing has been used to train a Boltzmann machine used in
classification methods. A Boltzmann machine is an artificial neural network with visual and
hidden nodes that encode information in their weighted couplings (Hinton, 2014). Whereas
general Boltzmann machines do not restrict connections between nodes, a restricted Boltzmann
machine (RBM) only permits connections between nodes in different layers. In either model, the
underlying network is expressed in terms of a Ising model that uses the spin variables as the
nodes and the couplings to define connectivity (Biamonte et al., 2017). Quantum annealing with
the Ising Hamiltonian can therefore be used with either type of Boltzmann machine to find the
optimal weighted couplings. Training Boltzmann machines with AQC/QA has been tested
experimentally (Potok et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2018).
5.3 Quantum Simulation

An emerging application area for AQC/QA is the simulation of condensed-matter systems, where
quantum many-body effects are often critical to the behavior of the modeled material.
Understanding the behavior of materials is a challenge because simulating quantum many-body
systems on a classical computer is computationally expensive. As originally proposed by
Feynman (Feynman, 1982), quantum computing offers a natural paradigm in which to both
model and simulate these highly correlated materials. For example, a key problem for materials
science is characterizing the energetic ground state of a material system; the formulation of AQC
in terms of a target Hamiltonian provides a natural connection to this problem.
Page 17 of 25
One approach to this materials science application is to use QA to simulate the magnetic phase
transitions in an Ising Hamiltonian over a multidimensional lattice. This application prepares the
ground state of the Ising Hamiltonian defined in Eq. 8 and then probes the prepared quantum
state to recover the magnetization. By selecting the parameters for the Ising Hamiltonian, an
expected phase of matter can be programmed and characterized. A recent demonstration
validated the observed magnetization for different phases of a spin-glass system (Harris et al.,
2018).
This approach may also be used to simulate quantum phase transitions provided the underlying
Hamiltonian supports a model for such a system. For example, the Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT)
phase transition can be simulated in a transverse Ising Hamiltonian over a square-octagonal
lattice. The KT-phase transition arises from frustrations and quantum fluctuations within this
model Hamiltonian, and QA-based simulations have been validated directly against classical
simulations (King et al., 2018). The programmability of the target Hamiltonian enables
simulation by quantum annealing to test many different model phases of matter.
6. Open Questions
Many prominent questions remain open about the expected physical and computational behavior
of AQC. This includes clarification about how non-adiabatic effects impact the performance of
quantum annealing devices as well as how the optimal run-time can be realized without prior
knowledge of the underlying energy landscape (Quiroz, 2019; Marshall et al., 2019). The design,
development, and demonstration of reliable and programmable adiabatic quantum computers
also remains an open endeavor. The idealized setting for satisfying the adiabatic condition
exactly has yet to be realized in practice, and robust models for describing non-adiabatic effects
will require better characterization about the underlying physical systems. Existing
demonstrations that relax the adiabatic condition have made remarkable progress in
controllability of quantum annealing, but experimental evidence remains mixed on the
computational performance. This is due mainly to the relatively small amount of data that can be
processed by these devices, which is insufficient for best-in-class comparisons.
Further experimental investigations into computational scaling using larger capacity devices will
help identify the significance of non-adiabatic effects. However, the scaling of adiabatic quantum
computing to arbitrarily large capacities is likely to require methods for managing and correcting
faults that arise from noise in the devices and errors in the controls. The principles of fault-
tolerant operation are well defined within the context of the circuit model of quantum
computation, where redundantly encoded quantum states are actively corrected in the presence
of noise. These principles may also apply to AQC, but a complete theory of fault-tolerant adiabatic
quantum computation has yet to be developed.
Assuming the engineering of scalable quantum devices is achieved, AQC can be expected to have a
significant impact on computational science. Already the formal reduction of many combinatorial
optimization problems to the Ising problem have made AQC an attractive model for a number of
Page 18 of 25
known applications. But AQC supports an even broader class of Hamiltonians, including those
that are complete for BQP and QMA. And it remains to be seen how this can be leveraged for new
methods of quantum computation.
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Adiabatic Computing

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Adiabatic Quantum Computing and Quantum Annealing

Adiabatic Quantum Computing and Quantum Annealing

Subjects: Quantum Information

1. An Introduction to Quantum Computing

2. Adiabatic Quantum Computing

Adiabatic quantum computing (AQC) is a model of computation that uses quantum-mechanical

2. The evolution time must be sufficiently slow to suppress internal excitation.

where is the instantaneous eigenspectrum of . If the quantum state

4.1 Example: Superconducting Electronics

4.2 Hardware Controls

for recovery error . .

5.1 Combinatorial Optimization

5.2 Machine Learning

5.3 Quantum Simulation

Lucas, A. (2014). Ising formulations of many NP problems. Frontiers in Physics, 2, 5.

Montanaxo, A. (2016). Quantum algorithms: An overview. NPJ Quantum Information, 2, 15023.

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