There have been multiple attempts to design synthetic benchmark problems with the goal of detecting quantum speedup in current quantum annealing machines. To date, classical heuristics have consistently outperformed quantum-annealing based approaches. Here we introduce a class of problems based on frustrated cluster loops - deceptive cluster loops - for which all currently known state-of-the-art classical heuristics are outperformed by the D-Wave 2000Q quantum annealing machine. While there is a sizable constant speedup over all known classical heuristics, a noticeable improvement in the scaling remains elusive. These results represent the first steps towards a detection of potential quantum speedup, albeit without a scaling improvement and for synthetic benchmark problems.
@article{arxiv.1711.01368,
title = {A deceptive step towards quantum speedup detection},
author = {Salvatore Mandrà and Helmut G. Katzgraber},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.01368},
year = {2018}
}