Generalized Mean-Field Ising Model as a Benchmark Family with Exact Solutions

Abstract

Exactly solvable models provide opportunities to understand complex optimization problems while offering controlled benchmarks for computational methods. However, nontrivial models that combine analytical tractability with challenging optimization structure remain scarce. Here, we introduce the Generalized Mean-Field Ising (GMFI) family, a densely connected and inhomogeneous class of Ising Hamiltonians whose ground states can nevertheless be obtained exactly. This exact solution reveals a hidden low-dimensional structure and enables a complete number-theoretic classification of different system sizes and degenerate ground states. Uniquely, the GMFI family can be used to benchmark both quantum and classical optimization methods over system sizes far beyond exact diagonalization. We investigate the GMFI family using several approaches, including theoretical analysis of quantum annealing, experiments on a D-Wave quantum processor, the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA), imaginary-time evolution (ITE), greedy algorithm, simulated annealing, and a quantum-inspired greedy algorithm. Despite the GMFI model's exact solvability, it exhibits nontrivial algorithmic behavior: although the quantum-annealing gap is expected to decrease with increasing system size, it shows pronounced and unexpected system-size-dependent oscillatory signatures. These results establish GMFI models as a rare bridge between exact many-body theory, number theory, optimization, and quantum hardware, providing a scalable benchmark for identifying and understanding algorithmic limitations in classical and quantum computing.