Experimental realization of quantum algorithms for a linear system inspired by adiabatic quantum computing

Abstract

Adiabatic quantum computation is of fundamental importance in the field of quantum computation as it offers an alternative approach to the gate-based model for the manipulation of quantum systems. Recently, an interesting work [arXiv:1805.10549] indicated that we can solve a linear equation system via an algorithm inspired by adiabatic quantum computing. Here we demonstrate the algorithm in a four-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance system by determining the solution of an eight-dimensional linear equation Ax=b. The result is by far the maximum-dimensional linear equation solution with a limited number of qubits in experiments, which include some ingenious simplifications. Our experiment provides the possibility of solving so many practical problems related to linear equations systems and has the potential applications in designing the future quantum algorithms.