Quantum Annealing in the transverse Ising Model

Abstract

In this work we perform numerical simulations of a quantum annealing procedure to find the ground state of a target Hamiltonian. By using this technique one starts from an Ising Hamiltonian with a transverse field that forces the spins to point in the x direction. The field is removed slowly with time, the purpose of this is to carry an adiabatic transition from the transverse-field Hamiltonian to the target Hamiltonian. In order to prove the functionality of quantum annealing we will introduce two terms to quantify the success of the protocol