Programmable Quantum Annealing Architectures with Ising Quantum Wires

Quantum annealing aims at solving optimization problems efficiently by preparing the ground state of an Ising spin-Hamiltonian quantum mechanically. A prerequisite of building a quantum annealer is the implementation of programmable long-range two-, three-, or multispin Ising interactions. We discuss an architecture, where the required spin interactions are implemented via two-port or in general multiport quantum Ising wires connecting the spins of interest. This quantum annealing architecture of spins connected by Ising quantum wires can be realized by exploiting the three-dimensional (3D) character of atomic platforms, including atoms in optical lattices and Rydberg tweezer arrays. The realization only requires engineering on-site terms and two-body interactions between nearest neighboring qubits. The locally coupled spin model on a 3D cubic lattice is sufficient to effectively produce arbitrary all-to-all coupled Ising Hamiltonians. We illustrate the approach for few-spin devices solving Max-Cut and prime factorization problems, and discuss the potential scaling to large atom-based systems.