Robustness of optimal quantum annealing protocols

Abstract Noise in quantum computing devices poses a key challenge in their realization. In this paper, we study the robustness of optimal quantum annealing (QA) protocols against coherent control errors, which are multiplicative Hamiltonian errors causing detrimental effects on current quantum devices. We show that the norm of the Hamiltonian quantifies the robustness against these errors, motivating the introduction of an additional regularization term in the cost function. We analyze the optimality conditions of the resulting robust quantum optimal control problem based on Pontryagin’s maximum principle, showing that robust protocols admit larger smooth annealing sections. This suggests that QA admits improved robustness in comparison to bang-bang solutions such as the quantum approximate optimization algorithm. Finally, we perform numerical simulations to verify our analytical results and demonstrate the improved robustness of the proposed approach.