Quantum

Optimization versus fair sampling in quantum annealing: An exactly characterized frustrated Ising benchmark

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Briefings

A new quantum annealing benchmark characterizes the difference between reaching a degenerate ground-state manifold and sampling it uniformly. Using an Ising ring with maximally separated couplings, researchers derived exact ground-state energies, degeneracies, and defect structures for N modulo four. The study compares D-Wave Advantage processors with simulated annealing, revealing that optimization success and sampling quality can diverge, with specific instances showing non-uniform conditional distributions despite high ground-state hit probabilities.

Key points

• For N=83, the processor visited 164 of 166 exact ground states, yet conditional distributions over states and defect sectors remained nonuniform.
• For N=160, the processor had a larger ground-state hit probability (0.869) than simulated annealing (0.519), but also a larger total-variation distance from uniformity (0.317 vs 0.136).

Context

This research provides an exactly characterized benchmark for open-system quantum annealing by distinguishing optimization success from sampling quality using an Ising ring with maximally separated couplings.

Limitations

Results are limited to antiferromagnetic benchmark couplings and N >= 5. The study covers up to 162 logical spins on D-Wave Advantage processors but does not provide additional background on the hardware architecture or experimental setup details.

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