arXiv subjects

Yuichiro Nakano

Publications and source records attributed to Yuichiro Nakano.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Qubit-Efficient Variational Quantum Optimization via Pauli Correlation Encoding: Application to Large-Scale Power Demand Portfolio Optimization

Variational quantum algorithms offer a promising route to combinatorial optimization, but their applicability is limited by the challenge of encoding large-scale problems within restricted qubit resources. In this work, we introduce a qubit-efficient variational framework based on Pauli correlation encoding (PCE) and apply it to electric power demand portfolio optimization. Binary variables are represented through expectation values of Pauli correlation operators, which encode multi-body correlations of the quantum state and provide a continuous relaxation enabling compact representations with few qubits. We further propose a two-stage hybrid formulation, in which a time-averaged problem provides initialization for a time-resolved optimization. Numerical simulations demonstrate near-optimal performance across problem sizes ranging from $m=18$ to $10{,}296$, with normalized cost gaps on the order of $10^{-4}$ relative to solutions with certified optimality. We show that the performance is governed by the interplay between continuous relaxation and discretization: the effective resolution of the correlator representation determines how reliably improvements in the continuous loss translate into better discrete solutions, with larger systems exhibiting more consistent behavior. Finally, we demonstrate robustness on a trapped-ion quantum processor, where high-quality solutions are obtained despite noise and finite sampling. These results establish PCE as a physically motivated and qubit-efficient framework for large-scale combinatorial optimization.

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arXiv2026

Divide-and-Conquer Neural Network Surrogates for Quantum Sampling: Accelerating Markov Chain Monte Carlo in Large-Scale Constrained Optimization Problems

Sampling problems are promising candidates for demonstrating quantum advantage, and one approach known as quantum-enhanced Markov chain Monte Carlo [Layden, D. et al., Nature 619, 282-287 (2023)] uses quantum samples as a proposal distribution to accelerate convergence to a target distribution. On the other hand, many practical problems are large-scale and constrained, making it difficult to construct efficient proposal distributions in classical methods and slowing down MCMC mixing. In this work, we propose a divide-and-conquer neural network surrogate framework for quantum sampling to accelerate MCMC under fixed Hamming weight constraints. Our method divides the interaction graph for an Ising problem into subgraphs, generates samples using QAOA for those subproblems with an XY mixer, and trains neural network surrogates conditioned on the Hamming weight to provide proposal distributions for each subset while preserving the constraint. In numerical experiments of Boltzmann sampling on 3-regular graphs, our method consistently accelerated mixing as the system size $N$ increased, with average improvements in the autocorrelation decay rate constant by speedup factors of about $20.3$ and $7.6$ over classical pair-flip methods based on nearest-neighbor and non-nearest-neighbor exchanges, respectively. We also applied the method to an MNIST feature mask optimization problem with $N=784$, obtaining faster energy convergence and a $2.03\%$ higher classification accuracy. These results show that our method enables efficient and scalable MCMC and can outperform classical methods for practical applications on NISQ devices.

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arXiv2025

Fair sampling of ground-state configurations using hybrid quantum-classical MCMC algorithms

We study the fair sampling properties of hybrid quantum-classical Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems with degenerate ground states. While quantum optimization heuristics such as quantum annealing and the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) are known to induce biased sampling, hybrid quantum-classical MCMC incorporates quantum dynamics only as a proposal transition and enforces detailed balance through classical acceptance steps. Using small Ising models, we show that MCMC post-processing corrects the sampling bias of quantum dynamics and restores near-uniform sampling over degenerate ground states. We then apply the method to random $k$-SAT problems near the satisfiability threshold. For random 2-SAT, a hybrid MCMC combining QAOA-assisted neural proposals with single spin-flip updates achieves fairness comparable to that of PT-ICM. For random 3-SAT, where such classical methods are no longer applicable, the hybrid MCMC still attains approximately uniform sampling. We also examine solution counting and find that the required number of transitions is comparable to that of WalkSAT. These results indicate that hybrid quantum-classical MCMC provides a viable framework for fair sampling and solution enumeration.

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arXiv2025

Neural-network-assisted Monte Carlo sampling trained by Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm

Sampling problems are widely regarded as the task for which quantum computers can most readily provide a quantum advantage. Leveraging this feature, the quantum-enhanced Markov chain Monte Carlo [Layden, D. et al., Nature 619, 282-287 (2023)] has been proposed recently, where sampling from a quantum computer is used as a proposal distribution and convergence to a target distribution is accelerated. However, guaranteeing convergence to the target distribution typically forces one to impose restrictive symmetry constraints on the quantum circuit, which makes it hard to design good proposal distributions and prevents making full use of the advantage of a quantum computer. We explore a hybrid quantum-classical MCMC framework that combines a quantum circuit with a generative neural sampler (GNS). The GNS is trained on quantum samples and acts as a classical surrogate to efficiently emulate quantum outputs, thereby lifting circuit constraints. We apply this method to Boltzmann sampling of spin glasses using proposals trained with a QAOA circuit. This approach outperforms conventional methods, showing a $\sim$100$\times$ improvement in spectral gap over uniform proposals. Notably, it maintains similar acceleration even without parameter optimization. These results establish the method as a viable sampling-based quantum algorithm for NISQ devices and highlight its potential for solving practical problems with quantum computation.

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arXiv2025

Electric Power Demand Portfolio Optimization by Fermionic QAOA with Self-Consistent Local Field Modulation

Quantum Approximation Optimization Algorithms (QAOA) have been actively developed, among which Fermionic QAOA (FQAOA) has been successfully applied to financial portfolio optimization problems. We improve FQAOA and apply it to the optimization of electricity demand portfolios aiming to procure a target amount of electricity with minimum risk. Our new algorithm, FQAOA-SCLFM, allows approximate integration of constraints on the target amount of power by utilizing self-consistent local field modulation (SCLFM) in a driver Hamiltonian. We demonstrate that this approach performs better than the currently widely used $XY$-QAOA and the previous FQAOA in all instances subjected to this study.

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arXiv2024

Scalable circuit depth reduction in feedback-based quantum optimization with a quadratic approximation

Combinatorial optimization problems are one of the areas where near-term noisy quantum computers may have practical advantage against classical computers. Recently a novel feedback-based quantum optimization algorithm has been proposed by Magann \textit{et al}. The method explicitly determines quantum circuit parameters by feeding back measurement results thus avoids classical parameter optimization that is known to cause significant trouble in quantum approximate optimization algorithm, the well-studied near-term algorithm. Meanwhile, a significant drawback of the feedback-based quantum optimization is that it requires deep circuits, rendering the method unsuitable to noisy quantum devices. In this study we propose a new feedback law for parameter determination by introducing the second-order approximation with respect to time interval, a hyperparameter in the feedback-based quantum optimization. This allows one to take larger time interval, leading to acceleration of convergence to solutions. In numerical simulations on the maximum cut problem we demonstrate that our proposal significantly reduces circuit depth, with its linear scaling with the problem size smaller by more than an order of magnitude. We expect that the new feedback law proposed in this work may pave the way for feedback-based quantum optimization with near-term noisy quantum computers.

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arXiv2023

Experimental Demonstration of Fermionic QAOA with One-Dimensional Cyclic Driver Hamiltonian

Quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) has attracted much attention as an algorithm that has the potential to efficiently solve combinatorial optimization problems. Among them, a fermionic QAOA (FQAOA) for solving constrained optimization problems has been developed [Yoshioka, Sasada, Nakano, and Fujii, Phys. Rev. Research vol. 5, 023071, 2023]. In this algorithm, the constraints are essentially imposed as fermion number conservation at arbitrary approximation level. We take the portfolio optimization problem as an application example and propose a new driver Hamiltonian on an one-dimensional cyclic lattice. Our FQAOA with the new driver Hamiltonian reduce the number of gate operations in quantum circuits. Experiments on a trapped-ion quantum computer using 16 qubits on Amazon Braket demonstrates that the proposed driver Hamiltonian effectively suppresses noise effects compared to the previous FQAOA.

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arXiv2023

A comprehensive survey on quantum computer usage: How many qubits are employed for what purposes?

Quantum computers (QCs), which work based on the law of quantum mechanics, are expected to be faster than classical computers in several computational tasks such as prime factoring and simulation of quantum many-body systems. In the last decade, research and development of QCs have rapidly advanced. Now hundreds of physical qubits are at our disposal, and one can find several remarkable experiments actually outperforming the classical computer in a specific computational task. On the other hand, it is unclear what the typical usages of the QCs are. Here we conduct an extensive survey on the papers that are posted in the quant-ph section in arXiv and claim to have used QCs in their abstracts. To understand the current situation of the research and development of the QCs, we evaluated the descriptive statistics about the papers, including the number of qubits employed, QPU vendors, application domains and so on. Our survey shows that the annual number of publications is increasing, and the typical number of qubits employed is about six to ten, growing along with the increase in the quantum volume (QV). Most of the preprints are devoted to applications such as quantum machine learning, condensed matter physics, and quantum chemistry, while quantum error correction and quantum noise mitigation use more qubits than the other topics. These imply that the increase in QV is fundamentally relevant, and more experiments for quantum error correction, and noise mitigation using shallow circuits with more qubits will take place.

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arXiv2023

QAOA-MC: Markov chain Monte Carlo enhanced by Quantum Alternating Operator Ansatz

Quantum computation is expected to accelerate certain computational task over classical counterpart. Its most primitive advantage is its ability to sample from classically intractable probability distributions. A promising approach to make use of this fact is the so-called quantum-enhanced Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) [D. Layden, et al., arXiv:2203.12497 (2022)] which uses outputs from quantum circuits as the proposal distributions. In this work, we propose the use of Quantum Alternating Operator Ansatz (QAOA) for quantum-enhanced MCMC and provide a strategy to optimize its parameter to improve convergence speed while keeping its depth shallow. The proposed QAOA-type circuit is designed to satisfy the specific constraint which quantum-enhanced MCMC requires with arbitrary parameters. Through our extensive numerical analysis, we find a correlation in certain parameter range between an experimentally measurable value, acceptance rate of MCMC, and the spectral gap of the MCMC transition matrix, which determines the convergence speed. This allows us to optimize the parameter in the QAOA circuit and achieve quadratic speedup in convergence. Since MCMC is used in various areas such as statistical physics and machine learning makes, this work represents an important step toward realizing practical quantum advantage with currently available quantum computers through quantum-enhanced MCMC.

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arXiv2023

Fermionic Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm

Quantum computers are expected to accelerate solving combinatorial optimization problems, including algorithms such as Grover adaptive search and quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). However, many combinatorial optimization problems involve constraints which, when imposed as soft constraints in the cost function, can negatively impact the performance of the optimization algorithm. In this paper, we propose fermionic quantum approximate optimization algorithm (FQAOA) for solving combinatorial optimization problems with constraints. Specifically FQAOA tackle the constrains issue by using fermion particle number preservation to intrinsically impose them throughout QAOA. We provide a systematic guideline for designing the driver Hamiltonian for a given problem Hamiltonian with constraints. The initial state can be chosen to be a superposition of states satisfying the constraint and the ground state of the driver Hamiltonian. This property is important since FQAOA reduced to quantum adiabatic computation in the large limit of circuit depth p and improved performance, even for shallow circuits with optimizing the parameters starting from the fixed-angle determined by Trotterized quantum adiabatic evolution. We perform an extensive numerical simulation and demonstrates that proposed FQAOA provides substantial performance advantage against existing approaches in portfolio optimization problems. Furthermore, the Hamiltonian design guideline is useful not only for QAOA, but also Grover adaptive search and quantum phase estimation to solve combinatorial optimization problems with constraints. Since software tools for fermionic systems have been developed in quantum computational chemistry both for noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers and fault-tolerant quantum computers, FQAOA allows us to apply these tools for constrained combinatorial optimization problems.

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arXiv2023

Higher-order Bloch spheres: A generalized representation of electron spin states with azimuthal phase factor

Using the similarity between spin states on the Bloch sphere (BS) and polarization states on the Poincare sphere (PS), we construct higher-order spin states on the higher-order BS corresponding to higher-order polarization states of photons on the higher-order PS. We investigate the time evolution of higher-order spin states in a magnetic field and establish an extended form of the conventional Larmor precession. The results provide insights on coherent transfer from extended photons to extended spin qubit systems with spin and orbital angular momenta and the operation of extended spin qubits.

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