Garcia-Pintos, L.
, Brady, L.
, Bringewatt, J.
and Liu, Y.
(2023),
Lower Bounds on Quantum Annealing Times, Physical Review Letters, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.140601, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=935713
(Accessed October 1, 2025)
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Lower Bounds on Quantum Annealing Times
Published
Author(s)
Luis Pedro Garcia-Pintos, Lucas Brady, Jacob Bringewatt,
Abstract
The adiabatic theorem provides sufficient conditions for the time needed to prepare a target ground state. While it is possible to prepare a target state much faster with more general quantum annealing protocols, rigorous results beyond the adiabatic regime are rare. Here, we provide such a result, deriving lower bounds on the time needed to successfully perform quantum annealing. The bounds are asymptotically saturated by three toy models where fast annealing schedules are known: the Roland and Cerf unstructured search model, the Hamming spike problem, and the ferromagnetic p−spin model. Our bounds demonstrate that these schedules have optimal scaling. Our results also show that rapid annealing requires coherent superpositions of energy eigenstates, singling out quantum coherence as a computational resource.Citation
Physical Review Letters
Volume
130
Pub Type
Journals
Download Paper
Keywords
Quantum mechanics, adiabatic theorem, quantum annealing
Citation
Issues
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Created April 5, 2023, Updated April 7, 2023