Quantum annealing by Path Integral Monte Carlo: the two-dimensional random Ising mode

Quantum annealing was recently found experimentally in a disordered spin-1/2 magnet to be more effective than its classical, thermal counterpart. We use the random two-dimensional Ising model as a test example and perform on it both classical and quantum (path-integral) Monte Carlo annealing. A systematic study of the dependence of the final residual energy on the annealing Monte Carlo time quantitatively demonstrates the superiority of quantum relative to classical annealing in this system. In order to determine the parameter regime for optimal efficiency of the quantum annealing procedure we explore a range of values of Trotter slice number P and temperature T. This identifies two different regimes of freezing with respect to efficiency of the algorithm, and leads to useful guidelines for the optimal choice of quantum annealing parameters.