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Quantum technology is maturing to the point where quantum devices, such as quantum communication systems, quantum random number generators and quantum simulators, may be built with powers exceeding the performance of classical computers. A quantum annealer, in particular, finds solutions to hard optimization problems by evolving a known initial configuration towards the ground state of a Hamiltonian that encodes an optimisation problem. In this talk I will present results from experiments on a 108 qubit D-Wave One device based on superconducting flux qubits and will provide evidence that the device indeed performs quantum anealing. To assess the computational power of the quantum annealer I compare it to optimised classical algorithms and will present first preliminary results for a D-Wave Two system with more than five hundred qubits.

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Prof. M. Troyer, ETH Zürich
Seminarraum Theoretische Physik
Contact: not specified