English

Knowledge Distillation Inspired Variational Quantum Eigensolver with Virtual Annealing

Quantum Physics 2025-05-08 v1

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a Knowledge Distillation Inspired Variational Quantum Eigensolver (KD-VQE). Inspired by the virtual distillation process in knowledge distillation (KD), KD-VQE introduces a virtual annealing mechanism to the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) framework. In KD-VQE, measurement resources (shots) are dynamically allocated among multiple trial wavefunctions, each weighted according to a Boltzmann distribution with a virtual temperature. As the temperature decreases gradually, the algorithm progressively reallocates resources toward lower-energy candidates, effectively filtering out suboptimal states and steering the system toward the global minimum. Moreover, we demonstrate the effectiveness of KD-VQE by applying it to the two-site Fermi-Hubbard model. Compared to standard VQE framework, KD-VQE explores a broader region of the solution space, and offers improved convergence behavior and increased reliability.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.03998,
  title  = {Knowledge Distillation Inspired Variational Quantum Eigensolver with Virtual Annealing},
  author = {Junxu Li},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.03998},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

6 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T23:23:44.957Z