13–16 Jul 2026
Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Campus
Europe/London timezone

Counterdiabatic quantum optimization for gauge theories

14 Jul 2026, 18:00
1h 30m
Room MB-B11 (Mathematical Sciences Social Hub)

Room MB-B11

Mathematical Sciences Social Hub

Speaker

Ethan Laval (University of Southampton)

Description

The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA)[1]
is one of the leading variational quantum algorithms used to prepare
the ground state of gauge theories. The design of QAOA is under-
pinned by the adiabatic theorem. Recently, there has been a proposed
variation of QAOA, DC-QAOA[2], that incorporates counterdiabatic
driving in order to speed up the adiabatic process, leading to reduced
circuit depths and runtimes. In this work, we use QAOA and DC-
QAOA, along with other counterdiabatic variations[3, 4], to find the
ground state of the Schwinger model and compare the results to show
how counterdiabatic driving can be used to improve the ground state
preparation of gauge theories.

References:

[1] Edward Farhi, Jeffrey Goldstone, and Sam Gutmann. A quantum ap-
proximate optimization algorithm, 2014.

[2] P. Chandarana, N. N. Hegade, K. Paul, F. Albarran-Arriagada, E. Solano,
A. del Campo, and Xi Chen. Digitized-counterdiabatic quantum approx-
imate optimization algorithm. Physical Review Research, 4(1), February
2022.

[3] Pranav Chandarana, Narendra N. Hegade, Iraitz Montalban, Enrique
Solano, and Xi Chen. Digitized counterdiabatic quantum algorithm for
protein folding. Physical Review Applied, 20(1), 2023

[4] Ruoqian Xu, Sebastian V. Romero, Jialiang Tang, Yue Ban, and Xi Chen.
Digitized counterdiabatic quantum optimization for bin packing problem.
EPJ Quantum Technology, 12(1), August 2025.

Author

Ethan Laval (University of Southampton)

Presentation materials