Improving quantum annealing of the ferromagnetic $ p $-spin model through pausing

Abstract: The probability of success of quantum annealing can be improved significantly by pausing the annealer during its dynamics, exploiting thermal relaxation in a controlled fashion. In this paper, we investigate the effect of pausing the quantum annealing of the fully-connected ferromagnetic $ p $-spin model. We numerically show that (i) the optimal pausing point is 60% longer than the avoided crossing time for the analyzed instance, and (ii) at the optimal pausing point, we register a 45% improvement in the probability of success with respect to a quantum annealing with no pauses of the same duration. These results are in line with those observed experimentally for less connected models with the available quantum annealers. The observed improvement for the $ p $-spin model can be up to two orders of magnitude with respect to an isolated quantum dynamics of the same duration.