Boltzmann Sampling of Frustrated J1 - J2 Ising Models with Programmable Quantum Annealers

Abstract:One of the surprising, and potentially very useful, capabilities of analog quantum computers, such as D-Wave quantum annealers, is sampling from the Boltzmann, or Gibbs, distribution defined by a classical Hamiltonian. In this study, we thoroughly examine the ability of D-Wave quantum annealers to sample from the Boltzmann distribution defined by a canonical type of competing magnetic frustration $J_1$-$J_2$ model; the 1-dimensional ANNNI (axial next-nearest-neighbor Ising) model. Boltzmann sampling error rate is quantified for standard linear-ramp anneals ranging from $5$ nanosecond annealing times up to $2000$ microseconds on two different D-Wave quantum annealing processors. Interestingly, we find some analog hardware parameters which result in a very high accuracy (down to a TVD of $0.0003$) and low temperature sampling (down to $\beta=32.2$) in a frustrated region of the ANNNI model magnetic phase diagram. This bolsters the viability of current analog quantum computers for thermodynamic sampling applications of highly frustrated magnetic spin systems.

Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)

arXiv:2511.03796 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2511.03796v2 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.03796 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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