2016/06/30 by Jack Raymond, Sheir Yarkoni, Evgeny Andriyash · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · Mathematics · #quant-ph #cond-mat.stat-mech #stat.AP
paper · pdf · doi:10.3389/fict.2016.00023
published as Frontiers in ICT 3 , 23 (2016) · 28 pages, 14 figures ; supplementary materials 18 pages, 5 figures [v4: updated supplementary material file correcting broken references]
arxiv created 2017/08/25 · arxiv updated 2017/08/28
Sampling from a Boltzmann distribution is NP-hard and so requires heuristic approaches. Quantum annealing is one promising candidate. The failure of annealing dynamics to equilibrate on practical time scales is a well understood limitation, but does not always prevent a heuristically useful distribution from being generated. In this paper we evaluate several methods for determining a useful operational temperature range for annealers. We show that, even where distributions deviate from the Boltzmann distribution due to ergodicity breaking, these estimates can be useful. We introduce the concepts of local and global temperatures that are captured by different estimation methods. We argue that for practical application it often makes sense to analyze annealers that are subject to post-processing in order to isolate the macroscopic distribution deviations that are a practical barrier to their application.