Quantum annealing showing an exponentially small success probability despite a constant energy gap with polynomial energy

Abstract: Quantum annealing (QA) is a method for solving combinatorial optimization problems. We can estimate the computational time for QA using the adiabatic condition. The adiabatic condition consists of two parts: an energy gap and a transition matrix. Most past studies have focused on the relationship between the energy gap and computational time. The success probability of QA is considered to decrease exponentially owing to the exponentially decreasing energy gap at the first-order phase-transition point. In this study, through a detailed analysis of the relationship between the energy gap, transition matrix, and computational cost during QA, we propose a general method for constructing counterintuitive models wherein QA with a constant annealing time fails despite a constant energy gap, based on polynomial energy. We assume that the energy of the total Hamiltonian is at most $\Theta(L)$, where $L$ is the number of qubits. In our formalism, we choose a known model that exhibits an exponentially small energy gap during QA, and modify the model by adding a specific penalty term to the Hamiltonian. In the modified model, the transition matrix in the adiabatic condition becomes exponentially large as the number of qubits increases, while the energy gap remains constant. Moreover, we achieve a quadratic speedup, for which the upper bound for improvement in the adiabatic condition is determined by the polynomial energy. As examples, we consider the adiabatic Grover search and the $p$-spin model. In these cases, with the addition of the penalty term, although the success probability of QA on the modified models becomes exponentially small despite a constant energy gap; we can achieve a success probability considerably higher than that of conventional QA. Moreover, we numerically show the scaling of the computational cost is quadratically improved compared to the conventional QA.