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Finite-temperature criticality through quantum annealing
Gianluca Teza1,2, Francesco Campaioli3,4, Marco Avesani5,6
1Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Nöthnitzer Str. 38, Dresden, Germany. teza@pks.mpg.de.
Nature Communications
|July 28, 2026
Summary
Quantum annealers now precisely study critical phenomena at finite temperatures. This new method overcomes noise and hardware limits, enabling exploration of complex physical systems.
Area of Science:
- Physics
- Quantum Computing
- Statistical Mechanics
Background:
- Critical phenomena at finite temperatures are crucial in many physical systems but computationally challenging to study near phase transitions.
- Quantum annealers offer potential for studying finite-temperature criticality beyond classical computational limits.
- Previous quantum annealing studies were hindered by noise, hardware limitations, and thermal fluctuations, limiting precise criticality resolution.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a novel quantum annealing sampling protocol for precise finite-temperature criticality studies.
- To overcome limitations of noise, hardware constraints, and thermal fluctuations in quantum annealers.
- To accurately determine critical temperatures and exponents for physical systems.
Main Methods:
- Introduced a new sampling protocol combining real-time temperature inference and controlled energy scale manipulation.
- Employed a careful embedding strategy to capture finite-temperature critical behavior on toroidal lattices.
- Tuned system energy scales and mitigated device defects to sample effective Boltzmann distributions.
Main Results:
- Successfully captured the finite-temperature critical behavior of the 2D Ising ferromagnet up to 2640 spins.
- Extracted precise critical temperature and universal critical exponents.
- Demonstrated a method to overcome quantum hardware limitations for criticality studies.
Conclusions:
- The developed protocol enables accurate finite-temperature criticality studies using quantum annealers.
- This approach overcomes previous limitations, opening new avenues for studying critical phenomena.
- The method is applicable to a broad range of equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems.
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