Robust Quantum Control for Adiabatic Quantum Computation

Abstract: Properly designed control has been shown to be particularly advantageous for improving AQC accuracy and time complexity scaling. Here, an \emph{in situ} quantum control optimization protocol is developed to indirectly optimize state fidelity without knowledge of the instantaneous spectral gap or the computational solution. The protocol is shown to converge to analytically-derived time-optimal controls for Grover's search algorithm. Furthermore, the protocol is utilized to explore optimized control trajectories for the Maximum 2-bit Satisifiability (MAX 2-SAT) problem, where appreciable improvement in fidelity and the minimum spectral gap over a linear schedule is observed. The approach is also shown to be robust against system model uncertainties (unitary control errors). This method is designed to enable robust control optimization on existing quantum annealing hardware and future AQC processors.