Power of Pausing: Advancing Understanding of Thermalization in Experimental Quantum Annealers
Jeffrey Marshall, Davide Venturelli, Itay Hen, Eleanor Gilbert Rieffel · Physical Review Applied · 2019
The current generation of experimental quantum annealers can shed light on the effects of noise and thermalization present in superconducting quantum circuits. Recent advances in this technology allow for direct probing of intermediate dynamics during the annealing process. By pausing the annealing over spans ranging from micro- to milliseconds and allowing the system to equilibrate, the authors identify several regimes of interest, characterized by the time scales of the dominant processes. It is shown that alternative annealing schedules inspired by physics may prove a fruitful avenue for designing more efficient solvers for optimization problems in quantum computing.