Classical Optimizers for Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum Devices

Conference · Tue Apr 14 04:00:00 EDT 2020

OSTI ID:1615327

Lavrijsen, Wim ^[1]; Tudor, Ana ^[1]; Müller, Juliane ^[1]; Iancu, Costin ^[1]; Jong, Wibe de ^[1]

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1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

We present a collection of optimizers tuned for usage on Noisy Inter-mediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices. Optimizers have a range of applications in quantum computing, including the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) and Quantum Approximate Optimization (QAOA) algorithms. They have further uses in calibration, hyperparameter tuning, machine learning, etc. We employ the VQE algorithm as a case study. VQE is a hybrid algorithm, with a classical minimizer step driving the next evaluation on the quantum processor. While most results to date concentrated on tuning the quantum VQE circuit, our study indicates that in the presence of quantum noise the classical minimizer step is a weak link and a careful choice combined with tuning is required for correct results. We explore state-of-the-art gradient-free optimizers capable of handling noisy, black-box, cost functions and stress-test them using a quantum circuit simulation environment with noise injection capabilities on individual gates. Our results indicate that specifically tuned optimizers are crucial to obtaining valid science results on NISQ hardware, as well as projecting forward on fault tolerant circuits.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) (SC-21)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-05CH11231
• OSTI ID: 1615327
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English