Enhanced Digitized Adiabatic Quantum Factorization Algorithm Using Null-Space Encoding

Abstract: Integer factorization is a computational problem of fundamental importance in cybersecurity and secure communications, as its difficulty form the basis of modern public-key cryptography. While Shor's algorithm can solve this problem efficiently on a universal quantum computer, near-term devices require alternative approaches. The Adiabatic Factorization Algorithm and its digitized counterparts offer a promising NISQ-era pathway but suffer from high-order many-body interactions that are difficult to implement. In this work, we propose a modified QAOA-based factorization protocol that simplifies the interacting Hamiltonian to include only two-body terms, significantly reducing its experimental complexity. Numerical simulations show that this method achieves comparable or higher fidelities than the standard protocol, while requiring fewer quantum resources and converging more rapidly for problem instances up to eight qubits. We analyze the characteristic fidelity behavior introduced by the Hamiltonian modification. Additionally, we report on simulations with alternative cost-function definitions that frequently yielded improved performance.