Quantum optimization of complex systems with a quantum annealer

We perform an in-depth comparison of quantum annealing with several classical optimisation techniques, namely thermal annealing, Nelder-Mead, and gradient descent. begin a direct study the 2D Ising model on annealer, compare its properties directly those model. These include Ising-like phase transition that can be induced by either change in 'quantum-ness' theory, or scaling couplings up down. This behaviour is accord what expected from physical understanding system. then go to demonstrate efficacy annealer at minimising increasingly hard two dimensional potentials. For all potentials we find general Nelder-Mead descent methods are very susceptible becoming trapped false minima, while anneal method somewhat better discovering true minimum. However, despite current limitations size, performs minimisation markedly than any these techniques. A designed so system almost never gets minimum, rapidly successfully minimises