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  • Open Access

Improving the efficiency of quantum annealing with controlled diagonal catalysts

Tomohiro Hattori1 and Shu Tanaka1,2,3,4,*

  • 1Graduate School of Science and Technology, Keio University, 3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa 223-8522, Japan
  • 2Department of Applied Physics and Physico-Informatics, Keio University, 3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa 223-8522, Japan
  • 3Keio University Sustainable Quantum Artificial Intelligence Center, Keio University, Tokyo 108-8345, Japan
  • 4Human Biology-Microbiome-Quantum Research Center, Keio University, Tokyo 108-8345, Japan

  • *Contact author: shu.tanaka@appi.keio.ac.jp
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Phys. Rev. A 113, 022433 – Published 20 February, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/vff6-cf7c

Abstract

Quantum annealing is a promising algorithm for solving combinatorial optimization problems. It searches for the ground state of the Ising model, which corresponds to the optimal solution of a given combinatorial optimization problem. The guiding principle of quantum annealing is the adiabatic theorem in quantum mechanics, which guarantees that a system remains in the ground state of its Hamiltonian if the time evolution is sufficiently slow. According to the adiabatic theorem, the annealing time required for quantum annealing to satisfy the adiabaticity scales inversely proportional to the square of the minimum energy gap between the ground state and the first excited state during time evolution. As a result, finding the ground state becomes significantly more difficult when the energy gap is small, creating a major bottleneck in quantum annealing. Expanding the energy gap is one strategy for improving the performance of quantum annealing; however, its implementation in actual hardware remains difficult. This study proposes a method for efficiently solving instances with small energy gaps by introducing additional local terms to the Hamiltonian and exploiting the diabatic transition remaining in the small energy gap. The proposed method achieves an approximate quadratic speedup of the exponential scaling exponent in time to solution compared to the conventional quantum annealing. In addition, we investigate the transferability of the parameters obtained with the proposed method.

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Phys. Rev. A 113, 022433– Published 20 February, 2026
  • Received 6 October 2025
  • Accepted 2 February 2026
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