Guaranteed-accuracy quantum annealing

Quantum chemistry calculations constitute an important application of quantum annealing (QA). For practical applications in quantum chemistry, it is essential to estimate the ground-state energy of the Hamiltonian with chemical accuracy. However, there is no known method for guaranteeing the accuracy of the energy estimated via QA. Here, we propose a method for guaranteeing the accuracy of the energy estimated via QA using the Weinstein and Temple bounds. In our scheme, before QA is performed, the energies of the ground state and first excited state must be preestimated with some error bars (corresponding to the possible estimation error) via classical computation with some approximations. We show that, if the expectation value and standard deviation of the energy of the state after QA are lower than certain threshold values (that we can calculate from the preestimation), the ground-state energy estimated by QA is closer to the ground-state energy than the preestimation. As the expectation value and standard deviation of the energy can be experimentally measured via QA, our results pave the way for accurate estimation of the ground-state energy using QA.

Automated summary

Quantum chemistry calculations using quantum annealing (QA) are important, but accurately estimating the ground-state energy remains a challenge. This study proposes a method that combines classical computation and QA to guarantee the accuracy of energy estimation by pre-estimating the expectation value and standard deviation of the energy.