TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bode, Tim
AU  - Ramesh, Krish
AU  - Stollenwerk, Tobias
TI  - Quantum combinatorial optimization beyond the variational paradigm: Simple schedules for hard problems
JO  - Physical review / A
VL  - 111
IS  - 3
SN  - 2469-9926
CY  - Woodbury, NY
PB  - Inst.
M1  - FZJ-2025-02545
SP  - 032411
PY  - 2025
AB  - Advances in quantum algorithms suggest a tentative scaling advantage on certain combinatorial optimization problems. Recent work, however, has also reinforced the idea that barren plateaus render variational algorithms ineffective on large Hilbert spaces. Hence, finding annealing protocols by variation ultimately appears to be difficult. Similarly, the adiabatic theorem fails on hard problem instances with first-order quantum phase transitions. Here we show how to use the spin coherent-state path integral to shape the geometry of quantum adiabatic evolution, leading to annealing protocols at polynomial overhead that provide orders-of-magnitude improvements in the probability to measure optimal solutions, relative to linear protocols. These improvements are not obtained on a controllable toy problem but on randomly generated hard instances (Sherrington-Kirkpatrick and maximum 2-satisfiability), making them generic and robust. Our method works for large systems and may thus be used to improve the performance of state-of-the-art quantum devices.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:001451675900006
DO  - DOI:10.1103/PhysRevA.111.032411
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1042351
ER  -