Greedy parameter optimization for diabatic quantum annealing

A shorter processing time is desirable for quantum computation to minimize the effects of noise. We propose a simple procedure to variationally determine a set of parameters in the transverse-field Ising model for quantum annealing (QA) appended with a field along the [Formula: see text]-axis. The method consists of greedy optimization of the signs of coefficients of the [Formula: see text]-field term based on the outputs of short annealing processes. We test the idea in the ferromagnetic system with all-to-all couplings and spin-glass problems, and find that the method outperforms the traditional form of QA and simulated annealing in terms of the success probability and the time to solution, in particular, in the case of shorter annealing times, achieving the goal of improved performance while avoiding noise. The non-stoquastic [Formula: see text] term can be eliminated by a rotation in the spin space, resulting in a non-trivial diabatic control of the coefficients in the stoquastic transverse-field Ising model, which may be feasible for experimental realization. This article is part of the theme issue 'Quantum annealing and computation: challenges and perspectives'.