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DOE OSTI · 3028213

Magnetic hysteresis experiments performed on quantum annealers

Pelofske, Elijah [Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)] (ORCID:000000032673796X)·Barrows, Frank Patrick [Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)] (ORCID:0000000193079771)·Sathe, Pratik Sunil [Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)] (ORCID:0000000299788955)·Nisoli, Cristiano [Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)] (ORCID:0000000300531023)
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Abstract

While quantum annealers have emerged as versatile and controllable platforms for experimenting on correlated spin systems, the important phenomenology of magnetic memory and hysteresis remain unexplored on hardware designed to escape metastable states via quantum tunneling. Here, we present the first general protocol to experiment on magnetic hysteresis on programmable quantum annealers and implement it on three D-Wave superconducting qubit quantum annealers, using up to thousands of spins, for both ferromagnetic and disordered Ising models, and across different graph topologies. We observe hysteresis loops whose area depends nonmonotonically on quantum fluctuations, exhibiting both expected and unexpected features, such as disorder-induced steps and nonmonotonicities. Our work establishes quantum annealers as a platform for probing nonequilibrium emergent magnetic phenomena, thereby broadening the role of analog quantum computers into foundational questions in condensed matter physics.

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71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTINGQuantum annealingmagnetic hysteresis

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Pelofske, Elijah [Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)] (ORCID:000000032673796X), Barrows, Frank Patrick [Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)] (ORCID:0000000193079771), Sathe, Pratik Sunil [Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)] (ORCID:0000000299788955), Nisoli, Cristiano [Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)] (ORCID:0000000300531023). 2026-02-27. Magnetic hysteresis experiments performed on quantum annealers. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aeb5192

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