Determination and Correction of Persistent Biases in Quantum Annealers

Abstract

Calibration of quantum computers is essential to the effective utilisation of their quantum resources. Specifically, the performance of quantum annealers is likely to be significantly impaired by noise in their programmable parameters, effectively misspecification of the computational problem to be solved, often resulting in spurious suboptimal solutions. We developed a strategy to determine and correct persistent, systematic biases between the actual values of the programmable parameters and their user-specified values. We applied the recalibration strategy to two D-Wave Two quantum annealers, one at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, and another at D-Wave Systems in Burnaby,Canada. We show that the recalibration procedure not only reduces the magnitudes of the biases in the programmable parameters but also enhances the performance of the device on a set of random benchmark instances.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 25, 2016
Accession Number
AD1010962

Entities

People

  • Alejandro Perdomo-Ortiz
  • Bryan O’gorman
  • Joseph Fluegemann
  • Rupak Biswas
  • Vadim N. Smelyanskiy

Organizations

  • National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accuracy
  • Annealing
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Programming
  • Computers
  • Couplings
  • Data Sets
  • Experimental Data
  • Ground State
  • Iterations
  • Magnetic Fields
  • Precision
  • Probability
  • Quantum Computers
  • Quantum Computing
  • Residuals
  • Standards

Readers

  • Adaptive Control and Estimation with Uncertainty in Dynamic Systems.
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Quantum Dot Semiconductor Device Photonics and Graphene Optoelectronic Materials and THz Physics.

Technology Areas

  • Quantum Computing