Benjamin D M Jones, Lana Mineh and Ashley Montanaro
{"title":"Benchmarking a wide range of optimisers for solving the Fermi–Hubbard model using the variational quantum eigensolver","authors":"Benjamin D M Jones, Lana Mineh and Ashley Montanaro","doi":"10.1088/2058-9565/adfe15","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We numerically benchmark 30 optimisers on 372 instances of the variational quantum eigensolver for solving the Fermi–Hubbard system with the Hamiltonian variational ansatz. We rank the optimisers with respect to metrics such as final energy achieved and function calls needed to get within a certain tolerance level, and find that the best-performing optimisers are variants of gradient descent such as Momentum and ADAM (using finite difference), SPSA, CMAES, and BayesMGD. We perform gradient analysis, and observe that the step size for finite difference has a very significant impact. We also consider using simultaneous perturbation (inspired by SPSA) as a gradient subroutine: here finite difference can lead to a more precise estimate of the ground state but uses more calls, whereas simultaneous perturbation can converge quicker but may be less precise in the later stages. Finally, we study the quantum natural gradient algorithm: we implement this method for one-dimensional Fermi–Hubbard systems, and find that whilst it can reach a lower energy with fewer iterations, this improvement is typically lost when taking total function calls into account. Our method involves performing careful hyperparameter sweeping on 4 instances. We present a variety of analysis and figures, detailed optimiser notes, and discuss future directions.","PeriodicalId":20821,"journal":{"name":"Quantum Science and Technology","volume":"53 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Quantum Science and Technology","FirstCategoryId":"101","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1088/2058-9565/adfe15","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"PHYSICS, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We numerically benchmark 30 optimisers on 372 instances of the variational quantum eigensolver for solving the Fermi–Hubbard system with the Hamiltonian variational ansatz. We rank the optimisers with respect to metrics such as final energy achieved and function calls needed to get within a certain tolerance level, and find that the best-performing optimisers are variants of gradient descent such as Momentum and ADAM (using finite difference), SPSA, CMAES, and BayesMGD. We perform gradient analysis, and observe that the step size for finite difference has a very significant impact. We also consider using simultaneous perturbation (inspired by SPSA) as a gradient subroutine: here finite difference can lead to a more precise estimate of the ground state but uses more calls, whereas simultaneous perturbation can converge quicker but may be less precise in the later stages. Finally, we study the quantum natural gradient algorithm: we implement this method for one-dimensional Fermi–Hubbard systems, and find that whilst it can reach a lower energy with fewer iterations, this improvement is typically lost when taking total function calls into account. Our method involves performing careful hyperparameter sweeping on 4 instances. We present a variety of analysis and figures, detailed optimiser notes, and discuss future directions.
期刊介绍:
Driven by advances in technology and experimental capability, the last decade has seen the emergence of quantum technology: a new praxis for controlling the quantum world. It is now possible to engineer complex, multi-component systems that merge the once distinct fields of quantum optics and condensed matter physics.
Quantum Science and Technology is a new multidisciplinary, electronic-only journal, devoted to publishing research of the highest quality and impact covering theoretical and experimental advances in the fundamental science and application of all quantum-enabled technologies.