Quantum Computation and Information Seminar 

24/10/2014, 14:00 — 15:00 — Room P9, Mathematics Building
Mohammad Amin, D-Wave

Functional Role of Tunneling in a Quantum Annealing Processor

Quantum annealing has been proposed as a means to solve optimization problems using the laws of quantum mechanics. Despite many publications confirming the presence of quantum effects, especially entanglement, in D-Wave quantum annealing processors, the question of whether such effects can lead to a performance advantage still remains open. In this presentation, I start with introducing quantum annealing in general and the D-Wave implementation of it in particular. After a short review of some benchmarking attempts, I present the recent experimental results obtained in collaboration with Google and NASA. The data from the D-Wave II processor installed in NASA Ames clearly show that the processor employs multi-qubit coherent and incoherent tunneling to outperform all classical annealing approaches, including simulated annealing, path integral Monte Carlo, and spin vector Monte Carlo. I end with a brief description of our theoretical modeling of open quantum dynamics and show agreement between theoretical predictions and the experimental data.