Rabi Oscillations Let D-Wave System Probe System Energy Levels

Researchers at Chuo University are applying a triangular-wave oscillating magnetic field to a D-Wave quantum annealer. This approach allows them to move beyond standard quantum annealing, which typically focuses on finding only the ground state of a quantum system. Instead, the team’s method directly accesses information about excited states within the well-studied transverse-field Ising Hamiltonian, a model central to understanding quantum phase transitions and non-equilibrium dynamics. The work proposes inducing Rabi oscillations to estimate energy gaps between states, potentially enabling simulations of larger systems than currently possible with classical computation. The researchers state this offers a new…