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The secret weapon of quantum annealing: the magical principle that surpasses classical annealing!
Many scientists and engineers face difficult challenges in the search for optimal solutions. Classical annealing algorithms have helped people solve many complex optimization problems, but with the increase in computing requirements, quantum computing seems to provide a brand new solution to this problem. Quantum annealing is an optimization process based on the principles of quantum mechanics, aiming to find the global minimum of a given objective function, and has demonstrated its superiority in many fields.
Quantum annealing was first proposed by B. Apolloni and colleagues in 1988. After several developments, its comprehensive form was proposed by T. Kadowaki and H. Nishimori in 1998. It exploits the superposition and tunneling effects of quantum mechanics to enable quantum parallel testing of the system between all possible states.
Quantum annealing starts from the full superposition state of quantum mechanics, evolves through the time-driven Schrödinger equation, and uses the quantum tunneling phenomenon to jump out of the local minimum.
Compared with classical simulated annealing, quantum annealing has a key advantage: its tunnel field strength makes the evolution of the system no longer solely dependent on the energy distribution of the current state, but can be transferred randomly through the tunnel. This enables quantum annealing to outperform simulated annealing on some problems, especially when dealing with combinatorial optimization problems with many local minima.
The tunnel field strength of quantum annealing is similar to the temperature parameter in simulated annealing, but the advantage of quantum annealing is that it can change the amplitude in parallel across all states.
The tunnel field in quantum mechanics is basically a kinetic energy term of potential energy. In some high and thin potential barriers, thermal perturbations will not be able to effectively push the system through the barrier, but quantum tunneling may be effective. Research shows that quantum annealing can exhibit higher efficiency under these circumstances.
In order to promote the development of this technology, D-Wave Systems launched the first commercial quantum annealing machine, D-Wave One, in 2011, marking a new stage in the commercialization of quantum computing. Subsequently, with the advancement of technology, D-Wave continued to update its equipment and launched more powerful quantum computers dedicated to solving practical optimization problems.
Research shows that D-Wave 2X can improve performance by 100,000,000 times compared to simulated annealing and quantum Monte Carlo methods when dealing with difficult optimization problems.
However, although D-Wave’s quantum annealing technology is exciting, some studies show that its actual effectiveness still needs further testing. For example, in one study, researchers found that D-Wave wafers did not exhibit any signs of quantum acceleration, posing challenges for the future development of quantum computing.
In the latest research, scientists are working hard to solve the problem of "quantum acceleration" to determine under what circumstances quantum computers can surpass traditional computers. As more research is conducted, new classes of problems are being explored, such as whether there are non-traditional optimization problems suitable for solving using quantum computing.
Faced with rapidly changing technology, the potential of quantum annealing is still being explored and discussed. We can expect that with the further development of computing technology in the future, quantum annealing will provide us with new perspectives and methods for solving more complex problems.
As we learn more about quantum annealing, how will this technology change our understanding of and solutions to computing problems?
