Co-designed counterdiabatic quantum optimization on a photonic quantum processor
Phys. Rev. Applied 25, 064026 – Published 5 June, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/7gl4-zrh6
Abstract
Hardware-algorithm co-design provides an effective route for implementing quantum optimization on near-term hardware. Counterdiabatic (CD) protocols can accelerate adiabatic optimization but are difficult to realize digitally due to increased circuit depth and noise sensitivity. Here, we report a photonic co-design strategy that directly implements CD dynamics on a programmable photonic integrated circuit based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer mesh. By exploiting the ability of the photonic processor to realize arbitrary unitary transformations, our approach bypasses gate-level decomposition and significantly reduces circuit depth. We further enhance the protocol by mitigating higher-order many-body terms in conventional CD optimization. An experimental demonstration of integer factorization achieves success probabilities up to 86% with only three layers, together with accelerated energy convergence, highlighting programmable photonic platforms for quantum optimization.
