Related papers: Entropic barriers as a reason for hardness in both…
A canonical feature of the constraint satisfaction problems in NP is approximation hardness, where in the worst case, finding sufficient-quality approximate solutions is exponentially hard for all known methods. Fundamentally, the lack of…
In this paper we study the performance of the quantum adiabatic algorithm on random instances of two combinatorial optimization problems, 3-regular 3-XORSAT and 3-regular Max-Cut. The cost functions associated with these two clause-based…
We consider a classical and superadiabatic version of an iterative quantum adiabatic algorithm to solve combinatorial optimization problems. This algorithm is deterministic because it is based on purely classical dynamics, that is, it does…
We determine the complexity of several constraint satisfaction problems using the quantum adiabatic algorithm in its simplest implementation. We do so by studying the size dependence of the gap to the first excited state of "typical"…
Quantum adiabatic optimization seeks to solve combinatorial problems using quantum dynamics, requiring the Hamiltonian of the system to align with the problem of interest. However, these Hamiltonians are often incompatible with the native…
We provide and analyze examples that counter the widely made claim that tunneling is needed for a quantum speedup in optimization problems. The examples belong to the class of perturbed Hamming-weight optimization problems. In one case,…
Quantum annealing is guaranteed to find the ground state of optimization problems in the adiabatic limit. Recent work [Phys. Rev. X 6, 031010 (2016)] has found that for some barrier tunneling problems, quantum annealing can be run much…
Tunneling is often claimed to be the key mechanism underlying possible speedups in quantum optimization via quantum annealing (QA), especially for problems featuring a cost function with tall and thin barriers. We present and analyze…
Recent technological developments have focused the interest of the quantum computing community on investigating how near-term devices could outperform classical computers for practical applications. A central question that remains open is…
An algorithm for a particular problem may find some instances of the problem easier and others harder to solve, even for a fixed input size. We numerically analyse the relative hardness of MAX 2-SAT problem instances for various…
An adiabatic quantum algorithm is essentially given by three elements: An initial Hamiltonian with known ground state, a problem Hamiltonian whose ground state corresponds to the solution of the given problem and an evolution schedule such…
A recent 3-XORSAT challenge required to minimize a very complex and rough energy function, typical of glassy models with a random first order transition and a golf course like energy landscape. We present the ideas beyond the quasi-greedy…
Adiabatic quantum computing has evolved in recent years from a theoretical field into an immensely practical area, a change partially sparked by D-Wave System's quantum annealing hardware. These multimillion-dollar quantum annealers offer…
Designing quantum algorithms with a speedup over their classical analogs is a central challenge in quantum information science. Motivated by recent experimental observations of a superlinear quantum speedup in solving the Maximum…
In the circuit model of quantum computing, amplitude amplification techniques can be used to find solutions to NP-hard problems defined on $n$-bits in time $\text{poly}(n) 2^{n/2}$. In this work, we investigate whether such general…
Some quantum algorithms have "quantum speedups": improved time complexity as compared with the best-known classical algorithms for solving the same tasks. Can we understand what fuels these speedups from an entropic perspective? Information…
Classically, for many computational problems one can conclude time lower bounds conditioned on the hardness of one or more of key problems: k-SAT, 3SUM and APSP. More recently, similar results have been derived in the quantum setting…
Critical decision-making issues in science, engineering, and industry are based on combinatorial optimization; however, its application is inherently limited by the NP-hard nature of the problem. A specialized paradigm of analogue quantum…
Two recent preprints [B. Altshuler, H. Krovi, and J. Roland, "Quantum adiabatic optimization fails for random instances of NP-complete problems", arXiv:0908.2782 and "Anderson localization casts clouds over adiabatic quantum optimization",…
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…